Investigation Four: Thematic Units By: Leah, Sam, Chelsea, Bryan, and Marie

Struggles of Minority Adolescents Goal: Students will develop an appreciation for multicultural history in America Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3 Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

Unit Standards Continued CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST B Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.8.6 Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

Classroom Specific Context ●Urban ●Diverse classroom ●8th grade ●24 students ●2 EL learners: 1 Hmong, 1 Latina ●2 Students with special needs: 1 LD (reading comprehension), 1 EBD

Core Text Analysis Title: The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child Author: Francisco Jimenez Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Copyright Date: 1997 Category/Genre: Fiction, Autobiographical Recommend Interest Level: 5-8 Recommended Age Level: Ages 12 and Older

Lesson 1:Whole Group Model for Catalyst Core Text One Core Text: The Circuit Summarization and Inferencing lesson: Read a short passage, determine the importance quotes. Determine why those quotes are important; such as, because they contain important ideas, the development of themes, development of characters or relationships between characters. Write a short summary of the passage using 20 or 30 words from the quotes and put them into a poetic form. Example: Shown in quickfire challenge

Lesson 2: Literature Circles ● Standard: Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision. ● Uses 4 main texts ● Splits class into 4 groups of 6 students based on reading level ● Each group will be using a source of technology for their role within the group ● Lesson is based on Travel Tracer using QR Codes to create a timeline ● I: Teacher will demonstrate a QR Code timeline placing them around the room using events throughout the school year ● We: Class as a whole will use The Circuit to create a timeline using QR Code ● You: Students will be dispersed to work in their groups and create a QR Code timeline based on their literature circle books

Lesson 3:Sustained Silent Reading Identification Texts: ●Ten Little Indians ●Kira, Kira ●American Born Chinese ●We’ve Got a Job ●Watson’s Go to Birmingham ●Red Scarf Girl ●Any other teacher approved book student’s choose Common Core Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.8.6 Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. Connections: Students have had experience developing a theme and character analysis as a whole class, and now will have the opportunity to apply that to a novel they have read individually. Goal: Students will develop an appreciation for multicultural history in America and understand the struggles students from diverse backgrounds have been through. Objective: Students will be able to write an essay using grade-appropriate academic language describing the theme of a text and analyze its development including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot. Students will also be able to present their character analysis in Grammar Lesson: Teacher presents sample essay that uses poor academic vocabulary related to the unit topic. Teacher presents students with domain-specific vocabulary using a rivet chart. Students will then reflect on the sample essay the teacher presented and replace the poor academic language used with the new vocabulary presented to them. Assessment Target and Methods: Students will complete an essay of 2-4 pages describing the theme of the story they chose to read using domain-specific words and phrases. Students will also complete a one- minute book talk on their story using Animoto, or create a concept map, or PowTunes.

Lesson 3 (cont.) Accommodations for EL’s and Students with Special Needs: I will have translated books available for my two EL’s. Also, for their essay’s they will be allowed to write their paper in the presence of the EL specialist. My students with special needs will be allowed to read their books silently either in my classroom or in the special education classroom. For my student with a learning disability, I will have lower reading level books available for them to choose from. Prior Knowledge: Students know how to create and will have the tools to create any of the tech projects for their assessment. Students have had experience replacing poor vocabulary use in their own writing and have been exposed to academic language in the past. Classroom Management Techniques: My classroom will be set up in small groups of desks with 3-4 students in each group. The groups will be randomly generated so that students of varying levels of ability will be together. I will encourage students to participate by promoting the idea that wrong answers are not a bad thing, and that they might help us arrive at the right answer. Students will be encouraged to work together with any questions that may come up during the grammar lesson. Students will be free to silently read their novels anywhere in the classroom, as long as they are comfortable and in their own space. Students will be able to choose which novel they would like to read with teacher consent. I will set out examples or suggestions of books covering all reading levels for students to choose from. Technology Used: As a class, I will present my writing sample on a SMART Board so we can interact with the text. Students will have access to school-owned ChromeBooks as well as desktop computers to create their tech projects in class. There will be no need to take outside of class time to complete these tech projects. Co-Teaching Models: I will have my school’s EL and LD specialists available to aid students with reading and writing when working on their essay’s, projects, and reading their novels.