Carolyn L. Streets
Two poignant enduring understandings anchoring the New Haven Public School Middle School ELA curriculum are for active readers to 1. draw inferences about what authors do not explicitly state, and 2. analyze the interactions between individuals, events, or ideas in a text to deepen meaning. To master these understandings, students read the core text entitled
When Elephants Fight: The Lives of Children in Conflict in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda
and then write their own personal narratives. This book foregrounds the issues seen in current world events and is the catalyst for this unit primarily due to reactions of students who want to know more about the lives of the children telling their stories. So, I carefully selected materials that are powerful mosaics of thematically rich stories centered around characters and themes focused on attributes like bravery, resiliency, and determination. My unit does not specifically focus on the geo-political issues driving the stories, but does recognize the overarching threads that ties them together. Given that this unit is to present of critical thinking strategies, I have chosen a variety of novels that I believe are socially conscious, are of high interest, and are appropriate in my intention to challenge students to engage in deep analysis. Specifically, students will examine the works of Shan Tan’s book
The Arrival
(2006), Kristen Applegate’s
Home of the Brave
(2007), Colm Tóibín's novel
Brooklyn
(2009), and its 2015 film adaptation. The sources are distinctly different in style, but are content-rich and share the same universal themes. Lesson plans can literally span an entire school year, but for the purpose of this unit, students will examine a literary device in each selection in order to determine overarching enduring understandings. I recognize there are a many ways students can approach this and analyzing a literary device in each novel may seem narrow in focus, however this purposefully done given the time constraints for the third quarter, and the volume of reading I hope to be accomplished in both this unit and curriculum. Our focus on literary devices in earnest will happen during the fourth quarter--I like to think of this unit is a great way to introduce such devises which will be expanded upon later as a secondary goal.
The target audience are middle school ELA students; however, the fluidity of this unit is applicable to any classroom. Additionally, this unit may be used in conjunction with the NHPS third and fourth quarter ELA middle school curricular expectations. For example,
Home of the Brave
is a powerful nonfiction account of the main character’s bravery in the midst of political instability resulting in the deaths of his core family members. It is a middle school level book written in short prose with a mixture of metaphors, similes, and allusions that insists upon the reader to explore the deeper meanings behind the main character’s trial and tribulations associated with his assimilation into American culture. I chose the book
Brooklyn
as a challenge for my students. Given that this novel is turned into a film, I anticipate that students will be able to use both the text and film version to support their levels of critical thinking. This book is a denser adult level read, however there are elements of the story that are translatable to the middle school audience. To assist with the flow of the unit, I will most likely summarize the character and conflicts in order to enable students to focus on the main goals of determining enduring themes. Also, the wordless graphic novel
The Arrival
will be used to link both stories. It is praised for its stunning visual impact on its readers. It’s panels of graphics flow together resembling that of a short film (hopefully, student will make a connection to the point of adaptation here) and emphasizes the experience of assimilation into an unknown culture. I chose this novel as it builds a sense of empathy readers should develop for its characters and help students make connections to the other chosen texts. All novels are praised for their literary sophistication and provides the rigor, depth, and breadth of knowledge I seek to accomplish with this unit as students engage in differentiated ways of reading.
Since the overall goal of this unit is to have students analyze a literary device from each text to create a metanarrative on its universal themes, I think it important to bring more context to why I believe in the significance of this unit. Since most authors do not explicitly state what is intended, students will be challenged to try various ways to uncover implicit text meanings. During classroom instruction, I encourage students to visualize the text as a winter garden- what is seen on its surface will slowly transform and reveal a different picture upon the passage of time. I use this conceptual metaphorical explanation to initiate student understandings of author’s intent, particularly when reading complex stories. This underscores why students should be aware of the significance behind the surface even if they are not initially sure of its meanings. By going beyond surface details, I hope students learn to become more attuned to the intentions behind the text. Moreover, when students consider the process by which they interpret texts, they can understand how meaning can fit together to reveal, define, and help them to reconsider larger understandings.
Grasping overall implicit meanings is a challenge, especially for reluctant readers, given that the skill requires abstract thinking. I appreciate how Silver et al describes this challenge as difficult to model, design lessons around, and access. If this skill is challenging for teachers, imagine the hurdles experienced by developing readers as they grapple with making evaluations about texts not readily explicit or immediately understood. Critical reading can be particularly daunting for any student who is confronted with multilayered themes that require abstract thinking- a prerequisite for higher-order thinking and 21
st
century learning skills. This is the paradox of text, what students read is distinctly different from the cognitive process of reading, and they must confront these differences within the context of discovering the “it” that extends beyond basic text understandings.