Thinking About Your Thinking

Metacognitive Reading Worksheet

The Time Machine — Chapter 6 — H.G. Wells (1895)

Signpost in Focus — Continuing from Chapter 5

Again & Again — When something keeps returning because the author is insisting on it. Anchor question: "Why does this keep coming up?"

Chapter 6 deepens everything Chapter 5 established. This time the tracker asks you to work across both chapters — to find patterns that span the full arc from the burned match at the end of Chapter 5 to the last match going out in the tunnel below. Again & Again at its most powerful is not within a chapter but across them.

NAME

DATE

A DAY

B DAY

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BEFORE READING: Preparing My Mind

Complete this section before you begin reading. Use what Chapter 5 has given you — particularly what you noticed in your Again & Again tracker.

1. By the end of Chapter 5, two things are clear: the Time Machine is inside the Sphinx's pedestal, and the Morlocks go in and out of the wells. The Time Traveller knows he will have to descend. Chapter 6's opening line — "It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way" — immediately signals delay. Why might Wells begin here, with the Time Traveller's reluctance, rather than with the descent itself? What does that reluctance tell us about the character and about what we are about to face as readers?

2. Think carefully about matches. In Chapter 5, the Time Traveller lit matches to explore the wells, to illuminate the Morlock in the ruins, and finally burned one "solemnly" for Weena. Each appearance did something different. Going into Chapter 6, predict what role matches will play. How many do you think he has? What might it mean for the story if they run out?

Reading Strategies I Plan to Use — Check all that apply

Chapter 6 is the most physically and emotionally intense chapter yet. Think about which strategy will serve you best when the pace accelerates and the darkness closes in.

Monitor — notice when I lose the thread Predict — make and test guesses as I go Question — ask why the author made certain choices Visualise — build a mental picture of the scene Connect — link to other texts, films, or my own life

DURING READING: Monitoring My Understanding

Pause at each section. Rate your understanding and keep your annotation code active. Track every match that is lit or mentioned — and watch for hands.

Comprehension Check-In: Rate your understanding of each section as you read (1 = confused, 5 = clear).

Section	1	2	3	4	5
Two Days of Dread The Time Traveller cannot face the descent. He feels physical revulsion at the Morlocks — "half-bleached colour of worms," "filthily cold to the touch." He sleeps badly, feels fear without reason, creeps to the great hall to be near the Eloi. He notices the moon is waning. He explores outward instead — the Palace of Green Porcelain — and then admits to himself it was self-deception.
The Descent — Weena's Farewell He resolves to descend. Weena runs with him, then clutches at him at the well-mouth. He kisses her — "Good-bye, Little Weena" — and shakes her off "perhaps a little roughly." A bar bends under his weight and nearly throws him into the blackness. He loses sight of Weena's face. He rests, trembling, in a horizontal tunnel.
The Underworld — the Machine Cavern Three Morlocks touch his face in the dark; he strikes a match, they flee. A vast arched cavern: great machine shapes, grotesque shadows, spectral Morlocks sheltering from the glare. A small table laid with meat — a smell of freshly-shed blood. The Morlocks are carnivorous. He sees it all in the brief light of burning matches.
The Reckoning — Almost No Matches Left He realises he has almost nothing: no arms, no medicine, and — critically — only four matches remaining. He wasted half the box amusing the Eloi. He reflects bitterly: "I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances." If only he had a Kodak.
The Escape — Last Match, Last Climb In the dark: lank fingers on his face, the matchbox gently disengaged, hands plucking at his clothing. He strikes matches one by one, retreating under their light. His last match goes out as Morlocks haul at his feet. He kicks free and climbs two hundred yards in darkness. He reaches the surface, falls on his face — "Even the soil smelt sweet and clean" — then Weena's hands, then insensibility.

3. If you rated any section 1 or 2, describe what broke down and what fix-up move you tried. If your comprehension held, describe one moment where the chapter's darkness — literal or atmospheric — created a reading experience that was itself disorienting. What did your brain do with that?

Double-Entry Journal

Find two passages from Chapter 6 that stopped you — a pattern you recognised returning, a moment of physical horror, a sentence about the Time Traveller's assumptions, or the specific texture of the darkness. Record each with your annotation symbol and thinking.

Passage from the Text (with location)	My Thinking — Symbol used & why this passage stopped me

Notice & Note — Again & Again Tracker (Chapters 5 & 6)

This tracker now spans both Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. Again & Again at its most powerful is not just about what repeats within a chapter, but what recurs across them. Two cross-chapter patterns are pre-filled. Add one you tracked yourself in the third row — it can be from Chapter 6 alone or across both chapters.

What Keeps Returning (Chapters 5–6)	Where does it appear across both chapters? Trace the pattern.	Why does this keep coming up? What is Wells building through this repetition?
Matches — burned for Weena's amusement (Ch.5); used to illuminate Morlocks and navigate the underworld; running low; the last match going out at the critical moment of the escape (Ch.6).
Hands — Weena's hands pulling at him at the well-mouth; Morlock hands touching his face in the tunnel, gently disengaging the matchbox, hauling at his feet; Weena's hands and lips on his face when he emerges.
An Again & Again pattern you tracked — from Chapter 6 alone or across both chapters. It can be an image, a word, a gesture, a situation, or a structural move Wells keeps repeating.

AFTER READING: Reflecting on My Understanding

You have finished Chapter 6. Now step back and think about both the text and how you read it.

4. The Time Traveller discovers he has only four matches left because he wasted half the box "astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty" — which includes burning one "solemnly" for Weena at the end of Chapter 5. The same matches that were tender entertainment above ground nearly cost him his life below. What does Wells build from this irony? Does it change how you read the Weena scene in Chapter 5 in retrospect?

5. Standing in the dark with almost no matches, the Time Traveller reflects: "I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances." This is the third time the novel has circled back to wrong assumptions about the future — the fourth-dimension argument in Chapter 1, "as most wrong theories are" closing Chapter 4, and now this. What is Wells doing by making the Time Traveller's intellectual overconfidence a recurring theme? What is he asking us to think about — not just about the Time Traveller, but about the Victorian confidence in progress that Wells himself is living inside?

6. In the cavern, the Time Traveller glimpses "a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal" and smells "the faint halitus of freshly-shed blood." He realises the Morlocks are carnivorous and wonders "what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint." He does not draw the conclusion openly here — but what conclusion is Wells inviting the reader to draw? And what does this discovery do to Chapter 4's image of the Eloi eating fruit in their great hall?

7. Chapter 6 ends with the Time Traveller collapsing on the surface: "Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible." This is the most physically broken we have seen him. What does Wells achieve by ending the chapter here, with the Time Traveller unconscious? Think about what it means narratively, emotionally, and in terms of power — he has just been hauled back, nearly captured, and now cannot even remain conscious. How has his position in this world changed across Chapters 3 to 6?

8. The Watcher's Report: Chapter 6 is about going in unprepared — without enough matches, without a companion, without really knowing what you are facing. The Time Traveller pays for every assumption he didn't question. Think about your own reading of these two Again & Again chapters: did you catch the match pattern before it became critical? Did you notice the hands? And now, looking back across all six chapters: which signpost has been most useful to you as a reading tool — Contrasts & Contradictions, Aha Moment, Words of the Wiser, or Again & Again? Which has been hardest to use? What does that tell you about yourself as a reader?

The Time Machine Unit — Metacognitive Reading Practice Chapter 6 Monitor. Question. Clarify. Connect.