LaShante A. James
The following is a list of classroom activities that would accomplish the unit objectives.
Pre-reading
Although the final product of the unit will be in the form of writing or visual representation of student learning, the process will help build student's reading as well. Teachers have been encouraged to aid students in forming connections between themselves and the text. This unit takes it a step further by encouraging students to form connections between texts and across immigrant and migrant groups. In order to propel students into forming connections, the following strategies are useful:
Expectation Outline: Students skim through assigned readings and write down questions they expect to answer or outline statements that correspond to the selected reading. Students should turn return to the outline during the reading to either answer, fill-in or correct what they have written. At the beginning of each week, offer students a list of readings that are to be covered. Allow them to brainstorm questions and expectations for that week's readings. For example,
Maggie: Girl of the Streets
is a very thought provoking title. Students may have a specific definition of what "girl of the streets" means from their own experience, and it would be beneficial to tap into that.
KWHL Chart: This organizer is similar to the KWL chart with an added column labeled "How I will find out…" Students write everything they know about the topic of immigration and migration under the K column, everything they want to know under the W column, and strategies for how they will find out the answers to their W questions under the H column. Leave the third column, the L column blank for students to return after the unit to write what they've learned.
I recommend using this KWHL chart at the very beginning of each time period being covered. Students can explore what they know about the condition that groups were living under during that time period, how the war affected immigrant/migrant groups and what they know about specific groups being covered.
Prompts: To help students develop connections between themselves and their own lives, pre-reading activities in the form of prompts can function as an introduction. For example, if we are reading a short story from
Bread Givers
where the protagonist is conflicted by her father's religious belief, and trying to assimilate into American society, I would ask students to write about a time when something they were taught at home kept them from being accepted by the larger community (friends, school or neighborhood).
I recommend writing prompts as a daily exercised. It's a great way to get the class warmed up for what you are going to cover, as well as a classroom management tool. Students can start prompts as soon as they walk in the door of the classroom, and allow everyone to settle in.
Wordsplash: Prior reading a new text, assemble a collection of words; specifically words that you know are necessary to grasp the meaning of the text and that are unfamiliar to students. For example, prior to reading texts such as Riis'
How the Other Half Lives
, Nasaw's
Children of the City
and Yezierska's
Bread Givers
, I would list words such as Torah, tenement, ragpickers, and boarders, because students wouldn't have encountered these words before. Arrange the words on a piece of paper or projector in a random way. The random arrangement of words makes the collection a wordsplash. Have students make predictions about what they will be reading based on the wordsplash.
During Reading
The majority of the reading will take place in the classroom, because many students struggle with reading, have difficulty reading outside of school due to home environment or family obligations or an outright refusal to read independently. However, providing a reading experience for all levels is important; therefore, I must make the experience beneficial to all, while challenging the eager reader. To insure comprehension and facilitate interpretation and analysis, students will complete during reading strategies in the form of graphic organizers.
For short excerpts, poems or music lyrics, read alouds will allows students to access the material and discuss it upon hearing it. The read alouds should be proactive an invite discussion.
Five Points, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Children of the City, How the Other Half Lives,
Jacob Lawrence's
Migration Series
Guided Reading
works best in my classroom, because the class size is generally small, ten students or less. I am able to sit with the class and help them thorough understanding a text. Guided reading is especially useful for students who are struggling readers. Texts:
Land of Hope, Becoming a Mexican American, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents
Book Clubs, also referred to as Literature Circles, would be useful for differentiation in the classroom. Students who are independent readers can and guide each other through the reading, while comparing multiple texts on the same topic. Each group would be assigned a different text, linked by the same topic, and present and discuss their findings to the rest of the class. Texts:
Maggie: Girl of the Streets, Bread Givers, Niesi Daughter, Fifth Chinese Daughter, Brown Girl, Brownstones, Coming of Age in Mississippi, Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory City, House on Mango Street
The dialectical journal can be thought of as a series of conversations with texts that students read. The process is meant to help them develop a better understanding of the texts being read and to utilize higher level thinking skills, as well as to process what they're reading, prepare for group discussion, and gather textual evidence for assignments. As students read, they would choose passages that stand out and record them on the left-side of the page (ALWAYS include page numbers). On the right-side page, students should write a response to the text (ideas/insights, questions, reflections, and comments on each passage). A paraphrase should not be accepted.
These passages that are identified, reflected on and analyzed by students are tools in the summative assessment process. Students can include this textual evidence in any form of final project that they select.
The Venn diagram is a graphic organizer made up of two or three overlapping circles. When reading, Venn diagrams can also used to compare and contrast the characteristics of items, like groups of people, individual people, books, characters, etc.
The Venn diagram is useful comparing texts or comparing groups with in a text. For example, Maggie from
Maggie: Girl of the Streets
and Sara from
Bread Givers
both grow up in tenements in the Lower East Side of New York. These are two characters whose experiences can be analyzed using the Venn diagram.
Discussion
This unit focuses on forming text to text connections, as well as self to text connections. In addition, I would like to provide students with the skills to discuss sensitive topics such as race and culture, while minimizing conflict.
One of the required activities of the New Haven Public Schools English Language Arts Curriculum is Socratic Seminar. Its structure allows for students to focus solely on the text once the ground rules are in place. The discussion is based on a text and a series text related of questions, so the student takes self out of it. Longer readings should be assigned or covered ahead of time, so that students can come to class prepared for the discussion.