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Refugees

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.
Picture
Topic One: Building Schema
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.
Monday, 9/12/2022
Today's lesson is intended to develop schema about refugees. (Basically to help the students understand "big picture" ideas about what refugees go through.) We'll start with a gallery-walk protocol during which students react to powerful images of the Vietnam War. (This year, responses will be tracked in a Google form to assess text complexity and prevent copying.)

In these two lessons intended to develop schema about refugees, we'll start with a gallery-walk protocol during which students react to images of the Vietnam War. (This year responses will be tracked in a Google form to assess text complexity and prevent copying.) 
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R5, 8R6, 8W5, 8W7, 8SL1
Building Background Gallery Walk Images and Form​
Sadly, our word cloud is incredibly vague. In a gallery walk filled with tragic images of escape and pain, the most commonly used words were "people," "like," "trying," "helicopter," and "looks."
Word Cloud

Tuesday 9/13/2022
​Despite less than ideal results yesterday, our students learning will go on! Today, they'll examine some data about yesterday's observations. They were not great - few specific words. To remedy this, they'll do a mix and mingle protocol to discuss sentences that describe yesterday's images, then they'll refine yesterday's observations using some of the new, specific words the sentences provide.

Finally, they'll start reading our first text: Inside Out and Back Again.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R4, 8R5, 8R6, 8W5, 8W7, 8SL1
​Background Mix and Mingle
Data Slideshow
Topic Two: Life Twists Inside Out
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.
Wednesday 9/14/2022
​

Close Read Protocol
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8W5
​Close Read Tools
Refugee Connection Tool
Reading Process
Bilingual Pages 4-9
​
Bilingual Pages 10-31
Thursday 9/15/2022
​Ha is the main character of Inside Out & Back Again.  She is a young girl who experiences great changes that make her think about who she is, where she comes from, and how those details will help make her who she wants to be.  
As we begin reading Inside Out & Back Again, we will reflect on who Ha is.  To deepen our understanding and connect Ha and her experiences to ourselves, we will reflect on who we are.  We will create a Google Slideshow with five slides that show who we are through images we choose to represent important parts of ourselves.  
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R3, 8R7, 8W4, 8SL5
Identity Box Requirements
Identity Box Template
Mrs Artieda's Exemplar "Identity Box" ​
Mr. Karpie's Exemplar "Identity Box"
Identity Box Rubric
Friday, 9/16/2022

Close Read Protocol
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8W5
​Close Read Tools
​Refugee Connection Tool
Reading Process
Bilingual Pages 32-69
Monday 9/19/2022
It's "Identity Box" round two! ...honestly, though, the "box" is in fact a Google Slides presentation, because it would be incredibly hard to find a Papaya tree in Dunkirk Middle School room 208. It would be even harder to fit it into a literal box. 

Today we'll make the connection to the text Inside Out and Back Again by creating an identity box for Ha. Today's assignment will be a bit more rigorous than Monday's with specific observations from the text, and corresponding inferences about Ha's heritage, family, symbolically significant objects, and passions.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R3, 8R7, 8W4, 8SL5
Updated Identity Box Template
Brother Khoi Exemplar
Identity Box Rubric
Topic Three: Documentary - The Escape from Saigon
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.
Tuesday - Thursday 9/20/2022-9/22/2022
Over three days, students will slowly watch the documentary linked above and slowly refine how the refugees' and the sailors' perspective impacts the reality of the escape from Saigon for the refugees in the documentary, and by extension, for Ha, the main character in their central text. 
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R3, 8W2, 8W7, 8SL5
​​Refugee Connection Tool
Friday 9/23/2022
The goal of the mind-mapping protocol is to make categories and connections between words. There is no “correct” way to make a mind map, the goal is to organize the words logically in a way that makes sense to you. Effective mind maps should include all the words, and some of our dialectic note symbols.Don’t forget, words can be organized to face different directions, into different shapes, symbols, etcetera to enhance meaning.

​The expectation is 90% on-task behavior: All eyes looking at the vocab strips and the growing mind map. All voices contributing thoughts, questions, and insight. Two languages being spoken, and respected and valued equally. All hands touching and moving vocabulary sentence strips. All group members under three feet away from the group’s mind map at any time.


NextGen Learning Standards: 8R4, 8R7, 8R9, 8W4, 8SL1, 8SL4, 8SL5 
​​Bilingual Vocabulary List
Mind-Mapping Direction
s
Topic Four: "Inside Out"
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. 
Monday 9/26/2022 - Thursday 9/29/2022
​Organizing and Writing Days
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R3, 8W2, 8W7
​Refugee Connection Tool
"Inside Out": Difficult Assignment
"Inside Out": Assignment
​"Inside Out": Easy Assignment
​
Writing Tools
Friday 9/30/2022
​
​Students will start with a highlighting activity based on the NYS, 4-point rubric. The goal of this activity is for students to  be able to evaluate one another's, and by extension, their own work as effectively as a teacher by the end of the school year.

After the highlighting activity, there will be a brief explicit instruction activity modelling how to assess student writing at each score point (4,3,2,1, and 0) followed by a Plicker-based response-card evaluation activity to ensure students can effectively evaluate writing.

After the response-card activity, students will perform a chalk-talk protocol during which the will walk around, evaluate, and offer actionable, evidence-based feedback on their peer's first quick write.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R3, 8R9, 8W2, 8W7
NYS, 4-point rubrics

Topic Five: UNHCR Connections

This week, students will choose a text to read from the UNHCR website to make connections between what Ha and her fellow Vietnamese refugees went through in 1975, with what refugees go through everywhere in the world, even today. Students will choose a refugee's story from the website, and demonstrate their understanding using our refugee connections tool. It is important to note that it is perfectly fine if, through their reading, students find that the refugee they read about does not share similar experiences with Ha. 
Monday 10/3/2022 & Tuesday 10/4/2022
​
​Close Read Protocol
This week, we'll start two new levels of refugee study:
  1. What does Ha's life looks like as life starts to come "back again" in her new home in Alabama?
  2. How can we apply this idea of life "twisting inside out and coming back again" to refugees across continents and decades?
Today, students will cover question #1 above with our standard, structured reading day, only this time, their evidence accrual form will be intended to collect only evidence of how Ha's life is improving.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8R7, 8W5, 8W7
Inside Out and Back Again Part 3: Bilingual
​Refugee Connection Tool
Wednesday 10/5/2022 & Thursday 10/6/2022
​
Today, we'll use an amazing web resource provided by the U.N. (and found by Ms. Davis.) Students will read through, and choose a refugee's story from the site linked above. Based on that refugee's story, they'll use our dialectic annotations to find evidence of the refugee's life twisting inside out, and coming back again. (It is perfectly acceptable if refugees' stories do not match Ha's. Our goal is to find out if there are experiences that are universal to all refugee's stories.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8R7, 8W5, 8W7
UNHCR Website
​Refugee Connections Tool
Friday 10/7/2022
​
Let's start with today's class for our students. We'll be turning the evidence and explanations we accrued from our UNHCR.org articles about refugees into a beautiful, big, evidence-based paragraph. Students who have excellent explanations written already will only need to worry about writing an effective claim, and adding transitions.

We'll use two of my writing tools to help:
  1. "The three levels of transitions" which takes students from below grade level, single-word transitions, to above grade-level transitions that link writing together to create a unified whole. (My college students use this tool more than my middle schoolers do.)
  2. This title is almost embarrassing to post, but please bear in mind that I teach middle school students... it's called the "Let's actually have baller introductions for once" tool. It helps kids go from basic, single-sentence claims into diverse, well-developed claims that demonstrate deep thought.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R3, 8W2, 8W7
UNHCR Website
​Refugee Connections Tool
Picture
Picture

Topic Six: Ha's Life comes Back Again

Greetings! If any of you are familiar with marathon training (bear with me now...I promise this relates to this week's work) you're familiar with the idea of a "cut back" week. Basically, you build up running mileage and speed for two or three weeks, and then "cut back" and do some simple, easy runs so your legs can recover. This week in ELA is our cognitive "cut back" week. We'll do some easy activities using some high interest text and images so that students have some time off to recharge their brain batteries before finishing our refugee unit.
Tuesday 10/11/2022 and Wednesday 10/12/2022
​
Today, we continued reading Inside Out and Back again with a very cool, but easy and creative check for understanding: the four lines, two circles summary.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8W4, 8W5
Picture
Part 4 - Inside Out and Back Again
Thursday 10/13/2022
​
Today, we're doing a station activity that represents a tour of refugee experiences around the world. We're using a software called Epic (which sadly, isn't free online) to read about six different countries. Students will then color in the location on a world map, and complete a "notice/wonder" chart based on their reading. Again, while this is educationally important to see how different country's refugee experiences are universal, the map activity and notice/wonder chart are easy for students to complete
NextGen Learning Standards: 8R1, 8R2, 8R3, 8R4, 8R6, 8W4, 8W5
Picture
Notice/Wonder Chart
Friday 10/14/2022
​
Today's "cut back" activity is our second 4-Corner's discussion! This time students will discuss what is universal, and what is unique about the wide variety of refugee experiences we've read about during this unit. Participating with a single response yields an 80% score for the day, and students can score up to 110% by responding four or more times.

Hopefully, this series of engaging, but easy activities will leave students ready to come back on Monday and re-engage with the highly rigorous curriculum we normally study. There are two weeks to go in our refugee unit.
NextGen Learning Standards: 8SL1, 8SL4, 8SL5
Four Corner's Discussion
Four Corner's Discussion - Sentence Frames

Final Essay Project

​Essay Description

For 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.

Success Skills

  • Read deeply for understanding.
    • [RI 8.1, 8.2, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9]
  • Write informative texts to support a claim.
    • [W 8.1, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.8, 8.10]
  • Choose compelling and insightful evidence.
    • [SL 8.5, W 8.4, W 8.6, W 8.8, W 8.10]
  • Make connections across "texts."
    • [RL 8.1, RL 8.2, RL 8.5, RI 8.3, RI 8.9, W8.4]
  • Refine and revise work by engaging with a structured peer-review process.
    • [W 8.5]

Day 1

Date TBD
Picture
Today we'll work together using the tool linked above to...you guessed it, create baller introductions for once. By the end of class, every student will have an amazingly written 5-7 sentence introduction paragraph for their essay with no less than 5 checks for understanding (peer and teacher) throughout class to make sure we're successful.

In this lesson I will tell you about why you should never start an essay with "In this essay I will tell you about..." 

Day 2

Date TBD

"Organizing and Writing" Day - Ha's Life Comes Back Again.

Today students will organize and writ their final body paragraph explaining how Ha's life has come back again. Where relevant, classes will finish reading the final few pages of the book  Inside Out and Back Again before starting to write.
Easy Prompt
Bilingual, Easy Prompt
Paragraph Prompt
Difficult Prompt

Day 3-4

Date TBD
Picture
Picture
During these two days, students will finish previously unfinished paragraph prompts. They'll intentionally organize and copy their paragraphs into their final essay document to create a essay weaving all the texts and materials we've read into a unified, or dare I say, universal embodiment of our learning.

Day 5

Date TBD
We'll start by modelling how to assess student writing at each score point (4,3,2,1, and 0) followed by a Plicker-based response-card evaluation activity to ensure students can effectively evaluate writing.

After the response-card activity, students will perform a chalk-talk protocol during which they will walk around, evaluate, and offer actionable, evidence-based feedback on their peer's first quick write.

We'll end by passing our essays to a peer so that they can improve spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, and offer feedback to move our essay to the next score point.

Universal Essay Materials

Picture

Refugee Connection Tool

This tool helps students to organize their writing in a few ways. It "chunks" the writing process into manageable tasks - finding evidence as they read or watch, and explaining the evidence as soon as they find it, instead of weeks after. By using a clear, table format, it helps students to see the structure of writing because it is literally structured. Also, it makes the writing process less scary, because they've done most of it ahead of time. By and large, when they sit down to write their paragraphs and essay, they can copy and paste their own work, allowing them to focus on the finer nuances of writing.
Picture

Writing Tools

The 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.

​Essay Differentiation

Bilingual, Easy Essay
Easy Essay
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.
Essay
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.
Difficult Essay
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.

Additional Resources:

Close Read

Til Gurung's Speech about Bhutan

Study Materials

Vocabulary List

Assessment

​Vocabulary Multiple Choice Assessment

Syrian Refugee Text
Syrian Text - Spanish
"Inside Out" versus "Back Again" ENL Imagery
"Inside Out" versus "Back Again" Categorizing and Ranking
Refugee Three-Dice Descriptions

Buffalo News Article: Burmese Refugees
None Available
What is truly scary? Discussion

PBS Series about immigrants/refugees coming to Buffalo - “Making Buffalo Home” ​

Video Library

Most people see refugees and think "wow, he really needs a new shirt," or "she could really use a meal." Melissa Fleming has the opinion that refugees don't need a handout, they need a chance. If you need to make up some work, and watch this, all you need to do is to pair it with one of our close read tools, and you can fill in their missing grade.
It's easy, as Americans, to say we need to be careful about letting refugees into our country. It's hard to watch this video and to understand why... If you need to make up some work, and watch this, all you need to do is to pair it with one of our close read tools, and you can fill in their missing grade.
Our world-wide refugee system is horribly broken. Everyone cries about millions of people and dollars and then complains that it takes 25 minutes to get a coffee from Tim Hortons in the morning. Our world has a workforce 25ish million people strong with skills and experience, and we look at them, and send them blankets. Alexander Betts has an awesome dating-app based solution to the refugee "crisis." If you need to make up some work, and watch this, all you need to do is to pair it with one of our close read tools, and you can fill in their missing grade.
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  • Home
  • Curriculum
    • Digital Team Resources
    • Zen Classroom
    • The Universal Refugee Experience
    • Free-Verse Poetry
    • Transition Week
    • Unconscious Bias
    • Short Story 1
    • Food Chains
    • Short Story 2
    • Murder Mystery
    • Wrapup
    • Extra Units >
      • 10:00 ELA Activities
      • COVID-19 Journal Project
      • Inquiry-Based Research
      • Short Story 3
      • TED Talk Extra Credit
    • Professional Development >
      • Co-Teaching Seminar
      • ORID Data Protocol
      • FSU CCLS / Next Gen
      • Google PD
      • UnSelfie: Book Study >
        • Empathy Lessons
      • Teaching in a Middle School
      • Backwards Design
  • Skills
    • Write >
      • Tools
      • Writing Process >
        • Informational Writing Process
        • Creative Writing Process
      • Differentiation
    • Read >
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      • Process
      • Differentiation
    • Web Design >
      • Google Sites Tutorials
  • Assess
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