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What universal experiences do all refugees share?
In this, our first serious unit, students read the book Inside Out and Back Again as the central text for learning about how all refugees experience the tragedy of life twisting inside out, and how only the "Lucky Few" ever enjoy life coming back again.
We link this novel with a series of news articles, Ted Talks, and documentaries to learn about refugees' experiences across countries and decades. |
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During the first week of the unit, our goal is to establish schema surrounding the Vietnam War, Ha (the protagonist of the book) and the basic exposition necessary to get a handle on the opening of the book.
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Close Read Tools
Background Mix and Mingle Building Background Gallery Walk Images and Form "Inside Out" Text Dependent Questions Exemplar Word Cloud Generated by Form Responses Quick Write 1 and Model Quick Write Writing Tools |
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This week, we'll do some diligent reading of Inside Out and Back Again. Our goal is to read all of part one - Ha's entire life in Vietnam. We'll also connect our own experiences with Ha's through an "identity box" protocol provided by Ms. Davis. We'll finish off the week with our first writing assignment - a formal, written version of the identity box students create on Thursday.
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Understanding complex texts is difficult for ENL students. Words like "flee" and "escape" are no different to words like "leave" when you're struggling to learn our language. As an aspiring Spanish speaker, I feel my students' pain. I've found one of the best ways to get the idea of "flee" and "escape" across to all students, and especially those that struggle with language, is to circumvent language entirely using a film.
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The Lucky Few: Story of the USS Kirk"
Question: "How does perspective effect understanding? Escape from Saigon Multiple Choice Assessment Two-Dice Descriptions - Escape from Saigon |
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This week is our first practice with a full writing protocol. With three texts to survey, it's worth using our evidence-accrual protocol. We work through evaluation of exemplars of past student writing, creating our first evidence mine, using that mine to complete a graphic organizer, and then writing paragraphs that are amazingly insightful.
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"Quick" Write 2 Exemplars: Chalk Talk, Round 2
Quick Write 3: Evidence Accrual Form Quick Write 3: At Grade Level Writing Tools |
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During Week Six of our refugee unit, students will make connections to refugees from another part of the world: Burma. Til Gurung's speech, while not specifically written to connect to Inside Out and Back Again, is organized to describe the horror that his family went through when their lives twisted inside out, and some of the help he was able to receive to make it come back again in a new, safe location. This week, our emphasis is on domain-specific vocabulary, to continue building our vocabulary repertoire and expanding the number of students able to create grade-level writing.
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Week seven of our unit utilizes reader response theory to connect the struggles of refugees to our own experiences and opinions about the world. Also, this is the first time that in both the book, and our text, we see some evidence that refugees' lives don't just twist inside out, they also sometimes [under 3% of the time, statistically speaking] come back again to a new home that is safe and fulfilling.
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This week we'll read our most gruesome, and as such, most accurate representation of the experience of refugees while their lives turn inside out. We'll also see first hand how cities like Buffalo help to bring refugees' lives back again. We'll also do one final, reader-response writing preparation activity to help students create explanations that are insightful, compelling, and work to create a unified piece of writing.
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Essay DescriptionFor this unit, our final essay will answer the question: how does the title of the book Inside Out and Back Again relate to the universal experience shared by all refugees? This essay, like all essays assigned in our class, is differentiated into three levels, for beginning, grade level, and above grade level writers. Below you'll see the tools used specific to this unit that follow our writing protocol.
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Success Skills
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Evidence AccrualBefore jumping to making a claim to answer an essential question, it is necessary to review what the texts offer as possible answers. Before making a claim, students complete an evidence accrual protocol. In the classroom, it is set up as a station activity, and at each station students read a meaningful selection from the hundreds, if not thousands of pages of text we read each unit.
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Evidence MineAt this point students find evidence that could support multiple answers to the essential question. All that evidence is dropped into an easily searchable, well-cited spreadsheet. That spreadsheet lives in the image to the left, and the title above. Feel free to click.
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Writing ToolsThe goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools below are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. What matters to my students and their parents are the tools below, and how they're used.
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For this "essay," our easy essay is in fact just two, well-organized paragraphs. We omit the introduction and conclusion paragraph. The "easy" writing differentiation includes transitions and sentence frames for ENL and Special Education students. You'll notice color-coded visual cues in the assignment the correspond with the graphic organizer we use.
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Our grade level essay for this unit requires students to write a four-paragraph essay with the assistance of our writing tools page. They'll have to compare Vietnamese refugee's experience with one additional country's refugees, complete with introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
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Our advanced essay for this unit advances students' thinking by requiring students to write a five-paragraph essay They'll compare Vietnamese refugee's experience with two additional country's refugees, and they'll have to do so with the most difficult texts our unit has to offer.
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