Marlene H. Kennedy
Students will respond to literature and experience a process in writing to create publishable text in a two-part unit highlighting story telling and diversity within American history. "Jewels of Endurance" will feature two historical novels teaching children the importance of enduring, despite hardships. Children will learn the true jewels of endurance are the stories of the human condition that go beyond the limits of time. Such stories transcend all barriers to give hope to those who follow.
In "Jewels of Endurance," students will read two novels,
Early Sunday Morning
and
Christmas After All
. They will read these novels in conjunction with
The Language of Literature
anthology, unit five, "Making Your Mark," which carries two themes: "Finding Your Voice" and "Voices from the Past." Through the text,
The Language of Literature
, students are given a variety of reading, writing, listening, speaking, artistic, and other activities which enable them to fully experience the stories, plays, poetry, essays, and other genre within the book. These activities introduce students to various themes and enable them to master many components of the English language, including grammar, usage, and mechanics.
In
Early Sunday Morning
, students will meet Amber Billows, a young girl who moves from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii with her family, a couple of months before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and usher the United States into World War II. In
Christmas After All
, Minnie Swift lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with her family during the Great Depression and describes the experience - from the stock market crash to the Dust Bowl - detailing how the events of the time change the lives of those around her.
In reading
Early Sunday Morning
, students will encounter and understand historical fiction through a voice from the past, Amber Billows. While immersed in Amber Billows' journal, students will discover literature brings life to the past. They will also compare and contrast the past with the present to identify how the past shapes their understanding of today's world. Students will learn that history continues to speak through the passage of time. In this response to literature, students will realize past experiences still have an effect on the present. Students will envision ordinary life in 1941 and find how little has changed in the ways people travel, communicate, and relate to each other. They will get a feel for what it was like to live in Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, thus sending the United States into World War II. They will internalize the experiences of the story, and they will identify with the experiences of children in times of crisis.
Students will respond to the novel through a variety of roles in literature circles modeled after
Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in the Student-Centered Classroom
. Six students in three literature circles will be assigned the roles of discussion director, literary luminary, illustrator, summarizer, creative connector, or other possible roles. Students will also respond to the literature by keeping a journal of personal reactions to the book.
Learning objectives include: literary analysis; critical thinking; grammar, usage, and mechanics; and vocabulary. In the area of literary analysis for
Early Sunday Morning
, students will identify the purpose of real and imaginary characters in historical fiction, fictional yet accurate setting, plot, internal and external conflict, implicit and explicit information, and tone. In the area of critical thinking, students will distinguish fact from opinion and connect the history of Pearl Harbor and World War II to their lives. Grammar, usage, and mechanics will focus on semicolons, dashes, compound and complex sentences, and adverb phrases. Vocabulary highlights include: synonyms and antonyms; words with suffixes; analogies; context clues; using prefixes, suffixes, and roots; and denotative and connotative meanings.
For the
Early Sunday Morning
assessment, students will write a three-page journal entry wherein they imagine themselves as Amber Billows one year later. Students must retain the tone and historical accuracy of the 1940s, being sure not to put any 21st Century events into this piece. As Amber Billows, one year later, the first page and one half of the journal will focus on her writing to her journal, describing what life is like now, in San Francisco, where she and her family moved after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In this section, students will tell why Amber, after moving with her family from Washington, D.C. to Hawaii two months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, never wrote to her best friend, Allison. In the second page and one half, students, imagining themselves as Amber, will write to Allison. Amber will confide in her journal that she finally did write to her dear friend, and this is what she said, and she will fill the remainder of the journal entry with her letter to Allison. Students will receive a writing rubric explaining how to achieve success with the project. As a culminating activity, students will watch the film,
Pearl Harbor
. They will compare and contrast the images of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the film with what they imagined when they read of the bombing in
Early Sunday Morning
.
Christmas After All
will enable students to understand that before they can make their marks in the world, they must first find their voices - the way in which they can best express themselves - as
The Language of Literature
attests. Some may discover expressing themselves comes not only through speaking and writing but also through dance, art, music, sports, math, and even science.
In the process in writing component, students will understand Minnie Swift's voice and how she came to find the way in which she could best express who she is - through writing - thus allowing herself to make her own mark on the world. By understanding Minnie Swift's journal and her life during the Depression, students will find their own voices by creating a three-page journal entry. The better writers will imagine themselves at Christmas during the Great Depression, and the less proficient writers will focus on what it is like to be a child in the present day, during Christmas. A general writing rubric will be distributed to the students before they begin their writing process. Teachers will use this rubric to assess the students' writing, and the students will understand that their audience could easily be anyone, from child to adult, who is interested in stories such as those portrayed in the
Dear America
series.
In
Christmas After All
, students will be introduced to the following literary analysis objectives: theme; the author's purpose or perspective; the difference between "subject" and "theme;" symbols; characterization; setting; and plot. They will also master the reading and critical thinking aspects of drawing conclusions, determining implicit and explicit information, making inferences about characters, and recognizing cause and effect. Grammar, usage, and mechanics will focus on sentence fragments and run-on sentences, ellipses, colons, conjunctions, and capitalization. In vocabulary, the emphasis will be on: context clues; apostrophes in contractions and possessives; denotation and connotation; regular and irregular plurals; idioms; analogies; and finding meaning clues.
At the conclusion of
Christmas After All
, students will view the film,
It’s a Wonderful Life
, a 1930s story of despair and loss one man faces and overcomes through a community of faith. Students will write an essay describing the similarities and differences between Christmas in
It’s a Wonderful Life
and Minnie Swift's Christmas.
Early Sunday Morning
and
Christmas After All
have been selected because the historical events of the Depression and World War II are integrated with the social studies curriculum. Sixth graders focus on United States history from after the Civil War to the present day in social studies, and the 1930s and the 1940s are two of the decades featured in the curriculum.
In conjunction with
The Language of Literature
, students will focus on several local curriculum standards, including: inferring title; tapping prior knowledge; visualizing; answering and creating questions which require thinking; making personal connections to the literature, while responding to it; comparing and contrasting cultures to learn values; identifying context clues; summarizing and retelling; drawing conclusions; identifying figurative language; omitting details; predicting; identifying explicit and implicit messages; and determining how to tell the difference between the purpose of a story and the main idea.
