Readers and Listeners are Changed by Their World.

Writers and Speakers Change Their World.

East Meadow Union Free School District

Louis R. DeAngelo, Superintendent of Schools

Cindy Munter, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction

Stacy Breslin, Clarke Principal

James Lethbridge, Woodland Principal

CAP Participants:

Andrea Lowenkopf, Aussie Consultant

Lydia Cordero

Tara DiPierri

John Gallagher

Cindy Munter

Lisa Scully

Sue Valente


Seventh Grade ELA Curriculum

RATIONALE

The East Meadow School District will be adopting the Common Core Curriculum Standards in Literacy and English Language Arts. The English teachers will incorporate these standards into their unit design to ensure texts are aligned with the complex requirements outlined in the standards. Within this unit, a collection of texts have been selected as our anchor texts. These texts were selected for careful close reading. This unit was developed by seventh grade teachers from Clarke and Woodland and the AUSSIE consultant. This collaboration will provide curriculum alignment in both middle schools.

Seventh grade students begin the year by exploring short stories. Exploring a unit of short stories offers students many opportunities to internalize and apply the knowledge they gain about reading and interpreting literature to the next story they read. They are more frequently exposed to the craft of using language, the literary devices that authors use, and how these can make a story successful or unsuccessful for a reader. The short stories themselves contain underlying themes or motifs that challenge the students to draw broader conclusions from the material, encouraging students to think on a wider level about interconnected issues and themes that run throughout the materials.

ABSTRACT

In this unit students will not only be exposed to a multitude of good stories, they will also develop their ability to put thoughts, ideas, and concepts into words as they discuss the texts presented. They will learn that they are intelligent readers who are capable of following the details and logic of an author’s argument. These anchor texts provide opportunities for students to spend the time required for careful reading of text in order to demonstrate in-depth comprehension of a specific source. Once meaning has been made, students can bring their own meaning into a text and negotiate these interpretations with their peers, their teacher, and the texts. These activities develop creative and critical thinking skills in students as well as confidence in their assertions.

In addition, students will develop a broader world view by reading authors from cultures other than their own, yet they will also see the connections between cultures and the universality of literature. They will feel more connected to their world. These skills will help them to succeed in the world beyond school, especially once they enter the career of their choice.

The following lessons are included in the unit:

·  Introduction, Overview & Beginning of Qualities of Successful Short Stories: What are the qualities of successful short stories

·  Character

·  Author’s Choice of Point of View: How does point of view influence the way a story is told?

·  How do authors use literary techniques to develop their characters?

·  How do readers use what they’ve read to discover the themes, the big ideas about life, relationships, family, friendships and world issues expressed by the author?

·  Conflict & Theme: How can readers understand theme through the examination of the conflict(s) presented by an author?

·  Setting: How and why did the author choose the setting for Zoo? or Can setting alter point of view?

·  Irony: How do authors use irony and repetition to empower the message hidden in the text?

·  Independent Reading: How can we become smarter by partnering up with others to create a book club?

·  Literature Circles: How can we be accountable to each other and the conversation through preparation and participation?

·  Literature Circle Handout

·  Qualities of Good Literary Essays: What are the qualities of good literary essays?

·  Pre-Writing: How do writers of literary essays read text and search for evidence/arguments that will be infused in their writing?

·  Restating the Question: How do writers restate the question to capture the readers’ interest while focusing the writing?

·  Thesis Statement: What should a writer consider when crafting a thesis statement?

·  Choosing an Authoritative Voice: Avoiding “I”

·  Choosing the Best Evidence: How do essayists choose the best evidence to prove their point?

·  Organization: Good writers make smart organizational decisions to structure their writing.

·  Editing Factory

Resources:

Anchor Texts

The Dinner Party, Zoo, Broken Chain, Island of Fear (Literary Essay)

Stage 1 – Desired Results
Goals:
Students will read a variety of short stories and be able to both talk and write about them concerning character, point of view, irony, theme, setting and author’s purpose.
Students will speak and listen in small Literature Circles in order to deepen their understanding of texts.
Students will write a literary essay.
Understandings:
·  Writers write to change their audience
·  One’s understanding of a text can be deepened through conversation with others
·  Speaking and listening are ways in which to transform meaning
·  Reading is a social activity
·  Interpretations of texts are influenced by culture, age, gender, socio-economic standing, time in history, state of mind and emotion
·  The purpose of engaging in discussions about texts is to deepen or change one’s understanding
·  Successful discussion members are active listeners
·  Successful discussion members back-up their arguments with evidence from the text
·  Successful discussion members ask probing questions
·  Authors purposefully choose a genre in order to communicate a message/theme / Essential Questions:
·  How do we discover an author’s purpose?
·  How do we identify point of view?
·  How do we learn about character through literary techniques?
·  How do we identify the theme?
·  How do we identify and track a story’s setting?
·  How do we identify and understand dramatic irony?
·  Why and when do authors use irony?
·  How do we listen in order to help others speak?
·  How do we listen in order to deepen our understandings?
·  How do we speak in a way that others can “hear?”
·  How can we remain open to other, sometimes opposing, interpretations of texts so that our own interpretations can be deepened or changed?
·  What are the qualities of good listeners, and how can we strengthen our own listening toolbox?
·  How do we delineate the best evidence to back-up our argument?
·  What are the qualities of a good discussion question?
Knowledge & Skills:
Students will be able to
·  write clear, organized, focused paragraphs
·  use strong evidence to back-up their argument and/or to answer a question
·  take notes in order to keep track of important details in a text
·  keep track of their reading by using a double-entry notebook
·  choose the best evidence to support personal arguments
·  identify and name the influences and purpose of setting
·  discover an author’s purpose
·  understand character through literary techniques
·  identify the story’s point of view
·  identify the theme
·  identify and track a story’s setting
·  identify and understand irony
·  explain why and when authors use irony
·  will be familiar with at least seven short stories (including The Dinner Party, Zoo, Broken Chain)
Stage 2 – Assessment Evidence
Direct Evidence:
·  Double-Entry Notes
·  Quiz
·  RAFT paragraphs
·  Conference notes
·  Literature Circle exit slips
·  Literary Essay / Indirect Evidence:
·  Partner talk
·  Literature Circle conversations
Stage 3- Action Plan
Below are sample lessons on the various literary elements we agreed to teach. They are not numbered, because you can choose in which order you would like to teach them, but keep in mind, that when we organized them, we took into consideration their increasing complexity.
You will notice that:
·  we moved the Double Entry Notebook lesson to the middle of the first lesson. You may decide to turn this into a stand- alone lesson. Andrea included a sample Double-Entry page for one of our short stories. You can use this, or create your own.
·  there is only one lesson on character. You may feel that you need to teach more than one, in order to have your students understand.
·  there are two lessons on theme. You may prefer one over the other, and teach that one.
As always, keep track of your successful lessons, and be ready to share them in June, when we revisit this curriculum.
Presenting the Lesson:
Because of the way that the human brain makes meaning and remembers, short stories with strong characters are one of the most powerful ways to change people. You may have noticed that every good speech has a short story in it. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about freedom for all people, but then talked about his own daughters. In news stories in the paper and on television, the reporter may be talking about poverty, but will drive his or her message home through a story of one person or one family. In advertisements, more and more often we start to get to know a person – like the Verizon Guy. In businesses, CEOs change their company’s direction through the telling of stories.
For the next few weeks, we are going to read short stories as a class and in small book groups. For the last week of this genre study, you are going to write a literary essay about one or two short stories.
Our first short story was written in 1941. It was written sixty-nine years ago! And yet, it is still read by people all over the world. It is taught in schools all across the United States. There is something – or many things – that make this a successful short story.
Introduce Double-Entry Notebooks [see attached]: Last year you became experts at writing in the margins of texts and/or using post-its. This year we are going to use Double-Entry Notebooks in order to make sure that we balance evidence and opinion. It will also help us keep track of our thinking, and the quotations that support it, so that when it comes time to write a paper or to take a test, we will have organized notes to help us.
Today, as I read aloud to you, you can just listen and enjoy and/or you can jot down notes in your double-entry notebook (words or quotations in the left-hand column, wonderings or noticings in your right-hand column) that you like, that make you think, that you can picture, that you believe are reasons that this story has lasted so many decades.
Lesson: What are the qualities of successful short stories? (Introduction, Overview &
Beginning of Qualities of Successful Short Stories)
Material : The Dinner Party
Minilesson: Read Aloud of The Dinner Party
Procedures: Whole class discussion and teacher takes notes. Notes are documented on
the reference chart Qualities of Successful Short Stories.
Homework: Fill-in the rest of your double-entry notes for the story.
Presenting the Lesson:
A memorable character is one of the most powerful forms of communication. Since this is so important, no author makes this decision lightly. Sometimes a character comes to an author’s mind and she follows him.
Authors tell us about their characters in obvious ways and in ways that force us to make inferences. They often use literary techniques to help us know their characters.
In your minilesson model how a successful reader takes advantage of every word to build his or her understanding of a character.
Lesson: How do authors use literary techniques to develop their characters?
Material: The chart Qualities of Successful Short Stories and Broken Chain
Minilesson: Shared reading of the first paragraph of Broken Chain
Procedures: Partner work & teacher conferring
Whole class Discussion and Teacher takes notes on a Chart Qualities of
Successful Short Stories
Homework: Double-entry notes on a different character
Presenting the Lesson:
We have spoken about how readers figure out who a character is. Perhaps even more important is the character’s point of view because this influences how he or she will tell a story.
For example, remember the last time you got in trouble at home. Now think of how the story might sound if you told it. If your mother told it. If your brother told it…
And just to make matters more complicated, since in fiction the author is making-up the character, she can also make-up her point of view. Is the character naïve? Is she all-knowing/omniscient?
Today I will model how successful readers figure out who is telling the story and what that character’s point of view is.
Lesson: How does point of view influence the way a story is told?
Material: The Dinner Party
Minilesson: Shared reading of The Dinner Party
Procedures: Partner work & teacher conferring
Whole class Discussion and Teacher takes notes on a Chart Qualities of
Successful Short Stories
Homework: Write a RAFT paragraph answering: How would this story have been different,
if told from another point of view?”
Presenting the Lesson:
The teacher reads the text, thinking aloud as she makes sense of the text. The teacher pauses after parts where the reader discovers the themes or the big ideas about life and family. During these parts, she demonstrates how to develop the theme into a statement rather than defining the theme of the text using one word.
At the end of the shared reading, the teacher can share the tip box with students, circling the themes that she discovered in the text and writing out the developed statement. Repeating, “What is the author trying to say about growing up or family?” helps students think of theme as a statement rather than a word.
Some themes in this text: responsibility, empathy, growing up.
Text: Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark
Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Está muerto, and then as if he just heard the news himself, crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries. I have never seen my Papa cry and don’t know what to do…