Dec. 9, Monday - SWBAT analyze informational texts to evaluate the purpose and credibility of authors and articulate ideas that contrast with students' existing knowledge about Civil War era documents.
IR - pass back Notebooks
Unit overview of Realism and Naturalism.
After we review the notes, we will move on to learning a little more about the history of the time, specifically the Civil War, to better frame our investigation of our informational texts today. Students will go to the next open page of their notebook, and I will instruct them to keep a list of their reactions, surprises, and information that they learn while watching the John Green video below. While all students have learned about the Civil War, many have not done so for some time and this video offers all kinds of interesting, helpful information that students will be able to put to use in our upcoming reading.
Narrative Non-Fiction:
Today's class-readings will come from historical narrative texts: followed by 15 minute class discussion for each
Spirituals - Analyze "Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot" and "Go Down Moses" for its spiritual characteristics.
Scansion Practice
HW: Watch Sojourner Truth's Mini-Bio and take notes on what you learned (10 things)
Dec. 10/11 (Block)- SWBAT evaluate impact and effectiveness of author's word and sequence choices in mixed media and informational texts such as spirituals, letters, and autobiographies.
IR
Reading Quiz on HW from last class.
Read through this information of African American Spirituals. Once we have finished discussing last night's reading assignment, we will switch gears to take a look at other examples of nonfiction and informational text of the time. Students are familiar with both the terms "narrative" and "nonfiction," but we will review the notes about "narrative nonfiction" to clarify the types of material found in this genre and connect our previous readings to each type of text.
To apply the content of the notes about spirituals and practice picking out characteristics of spirituals, we will then listen to two spirituals. I play the music from YouTube (without showing the video to students) while they read the lyrics from the links below.
HW: After, we will view a mini-biography of Sojourner Truth to gather background information about her life. After watching the video, I will ask students what they learned that they didn't already know about Truth and also what surprised them about her. In past years, the fact that she went to court about her son's involvement with slavery at such a tenuous time for African Americans (freed or otherwise) has been the most surprising fact of this short clip. Students will build on the knowledge developed in this clip by taking 2-3 minutes to individually read "An Account of an Experience with Discrimination" (on page 254), marking evidence from the letter and clip to form an indirect characterization about Truth.
Dec. 12, Thursday - SWBAT analyze the use of satire, humor, and dialect using Mark Twain's "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and a variety of informational texts and charts to gather background information for a narrative writing application.
IR
Read Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" - annotate for what makes this text a "Realism" text
Dialect and Humor notes - use these notes to apply to the next text, and study for the final
Students will work with their pre-assigned groups of three, as designated by the seating chart created utilizing data from student learning preferences surveys to match similar types of learners, to collect evidence and analyze one of these specific textual features.
Dec. 13, Friday - SWBAT evaluate the author's purpose and language choices to examine similar themes of deception in three Realist poems through small and whole-group collaborative analysis.