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.
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Lesson Plans |
Materials |
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Week 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.
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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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Week Two: Refining our Writing Through Character
During week two of our unit, we utilize the schema we've built, paired with some reader-response theory, to continue reading, and to refine our writing with a second "quick" write, while connecting the text to ourselves. Once students have proved their understanding of the characters and setting, we move on to connecting the story to other refugees' experiences world wide.
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Week Three: TED Talks Connections
Choosing an important, central text is imperative to creating an effective unit, but choosing effective paired texts is where the art and science of education really shows. This week, we pair an important, current, TED Talk with our central text, which deals with events which, for our students, are history beyond the most ancient of reckoning.
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Week Four: 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.
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Google Classroom Question Refining: "How does perspective effect understanding of an event?"
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Week Five: Full "Quick" Writing Protocol
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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Week Six: Bhutanese Connections
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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Til Gurung Speech
Til Gurung Speech (Spanish) Close Read Tools Vocabulary List Vocabulary Tangram Activity Vocabulary Multiple Choice Assessment |
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Week Seven: Syrian Connections
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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Week Eight: Burmese Connections
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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Final Essay Project
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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Essay Materials |
Essay Differentiation |