Task One: Previewing
The choice of differentiated instruction with flexible grouping requires the implementation of pre-reading activities that can accommodate all my students’ needs. All the documents and texts we will analyze will be initiated with a simple Quick Write or a Probable Passage, or a Tea Party.
Quick Write activity
(at the very beginning of the unit):
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1. Prompt: “What is your definition of democracy? What are the qualities of a democracy? Why? What are the possible negative aspects of a democracy? Why? Support your thoughts with some examples.”
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I always participate to all my students’ activities because it improves their engagement and makes the activity “real.”
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2. Sharing Time: all my students will be sitting in a circle. One of us (either the teacher or a student) will start reading aloud and taking brief notes. Any other student can respond to the writer and/or share the writing.
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3. When Sharing Time is over, I will ask them to go through their notes and determine the reasons and causes just shared in class. I will write the list of causes and effects on a Post-It board.
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4. At this point, I will ask them to spend some other minutes and write if their initial position has changed after our discussion/sharing time, and why.
Probable Passage Activity
(pre-reading activity):
When I present my students this activity for the first time, I model it. Then, we do it together on our second time. I also form groups of three or four students.
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1. I will write on the board a list of words from the passage we are about to read.
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2. I will ask them to distribute those words in one of the following categories: character(s), setting, causes, outcome(s), and unknown words.
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3. When they finish categorizing the words, I will ask them to write a Gist Statement (concise statement).
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4. Sharing Time: I will ask the students to say/share how they categorized those words. I will write them on the board together with their gist statements.
Tea Party activity
(pre-reading activity):
(I would not suggest modeling it because “not knowing how to do it” triggers more thinking.)
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1. I will prepare fifteen or twenty index card with one phrase from the document they will be reading. I can repeat those phrases two or three times, so you can have one card per student.
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2. I will give one card to each student and ask them to move from student to student. While moving, they have to share their card, listen to others as they read their cards, discuss how these cards might refer to, and suggest what these cards might mean.
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3. I will ask them to form groups of three or four students and write what they think about those statements in the cards and why.
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4. Sharing Time: I will ask the students to read what they wrote and I take notes on the board.
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5. After reading the text, we will have another Sharing Time to compare and contrast their predictions and the text. This step also helps them understand how the explorers drew their conclusions and how the researcher has to find out the validity of these conclusions.
Task Two: Close Reading and Analytical Writing
For advanced grade-level readers, Honors students, and AP students, I do the following:
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1. Read the passage/document again;
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2. Underline interesting, important, and/or unusual/unexpected words, phrases, and language structures, and label them in the margin;
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3. Determine connections and draw arrows from one part of the passage to another to mark those connections;
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4. Highlight the descriptions, the reflections, the facts, or the purpose.
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5. What is the main idea or subject of the text? How do you know? How is it presented? Does the author introduce it immediately? Does the author express this main idea, or do you have to infer it? How do you infer it? What clues support your theory?
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6. When did this situation occur? Why? How do you know or determine the time and place this situation occurred? Is it clearly stated? Do you infer it? How do you infer it? What clues confirm your theory?
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7. Who is the audience? How do you know? Is it clearly stated? How? How do you infer it? What clues confirm your theory?
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8. Who is the voice that tells the story? Is it the author? How do you know? What assumptions can you make about this voice? Can you assume what age, education, social status, hidden reasons for writing this document?
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9. What is/are the purpose(s) of the document? What’s the reason(s) behind the text? How do you know? What reaction(s) in the audience does the writer want to achieve? Why? How do you know? What techniques does the author use to achieve this purpose? How do you think the audience will feel? What is the effect the author wants to achieve?
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10. What is the tone of this document? How do you know? What word(s) or phrase(s) determine this tone? Why? What details, sentence structures, or images convey this tone? Why?
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11. Sharing Time: the students share their analysis, discuss and take notes in their journals.
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12. Do you notice any difference(s)/similarity(ies) between this document and the previous one(s) you analyzed?
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13. Can you notice/infer any difference(s)/similarity(ies) between the author of this document and the previous one(s)?
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14. Do you notice any stylistic difference(s)/similarity(ies) between this document and the previous one(s) you analyzed?
Modification:
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1. Read the passage/document again;
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2. Underline interesting, important, and/or unusual/unexpected words, phrases, and language structures;
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3. Determine connections and draw arrows from one part of the passage to another to mark those connections;
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4. Write a “Wonder Why” question for each interesting, important, unusual, or unexpected word/phrase. Write your theory(ies) and support it with clear references to the text.
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5. Sharing Time: the students share, discuss their interpretations, and take notes of the peer’s thoughts in their journals.
Task Three: Final Paper
The Final Paper will be a synthesis essay with an annotated bibliography. This documented essay will follow various stages. In fact, we will start determining the thesis statement in response to the essential question, “What is a democracy?” In order to determine a strong thesis statement, the students have to:
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1. Reread their journals/responses/notes and highlight the details, information you want to use to support your theory;
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2. Write a possible idea/theory, share, and discuss it with the peers;
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3. Write a discovery draft with a thesis statement and reasons;
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4. Write a first draft containing the thesis statement, the reasons, the supports/references from the documents, and the analysis/discussion why those references support the assertions. This draft will be followed by a group work of peer revision;
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5. Write a second draft including the suggestions from the peer’s revision. This will be followed by a group work of peer’s editing;
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6. Write a third draft followed by a conference with the teacher.
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7. Write the annotated bibliography of the documents cited in the essay. They will have a model for the MLA requirements. Each source will be followed by few lines describing the content of the source.
Modification:
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1. Reread their journals/responses/notes and highlight the details, information you want to use to support your theory;
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2. Write the thesis in response to the essential question and use one Power Point slide;
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3. Determine and write the reasons for your theory/thesis and use one Power Point slide;
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4. Find the evidences in the documents and write them in other slides.
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5. Write a brief conclusion on a slide.
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6. Sharing Time: each student will read the slides and discuss his/her theory and the evidence(s) with the class.
The students who will write the documented essay will prepare the presentation (sharing time) with slides that will illustrate their theory, reasons, references to sources, connections between support and reason, and conclusion.