Welcome to Module Five ! Coming to America Essential Question: Dear Parents and Guardians, How do we best write about our own personal experiences as authors? In this module, students will be reading memoirs about different immigrants’ experiences coming to the United States and adapting to their new lives. Students will read two memoirs, Funny in Farsi and Of Beetles and Angels to identify the different strategies that authors use to convey their ideas. After reading these personal memoirs, students will analyze how two authors can write about the same topics, but use different writing strategies, text structures, and stories to explain their experiences. In this module, students will focus on comparing and contrasting the differences in which two authors convey their experience as immigrants in two diverse American communities. Unit 1 - In this unit, students will focus on the significance of key individuals and events that authors introduce in a text. After identifying the central idea of the text, students will explain how each event or individual helps the author to illustrate the central idea of the text. Unit 2 - In this unit, students will identify the different writing strategies that authors use convey their experiences and explain important details in the text. Unit 3 - In this unit, students will compare and contrast different various texts written on the same topic. Students will determine the different purposes of each author and compare the strategies that each author used to achieve their purpose.In order to develop this kind of thinking, we need your help! Students need to become text analysis detectives while reading, and they will need encouragement throughout this transformation. Here are a few ideas of activities that would support our home-school partnership:Write the assessment dates and project due dates on a shared calendar. Then ask your student about how you can help as the date approaches.Check our weebly site together: http://byrnesberenson.weebly.com/ We have linked great resources that will help with studying for the assessments, learning the basic structures and reviewing the best strategies for understanding informational text. Read or reread the excerpts together. Discuss the text structure, the features, the ideas and the author’s writing strategies. By reading about the world or high interest articles together, you can reinforce all that we are learning in class. Practice! Encourage your student to use iReady, Achieve3000 and MyOn as these resources use a variety of texts. (Students may stay in for recess or come to school early to do so if technology is not available elsewhere.) Talk to your children about the topics presented in class readings. Does your family have any similar experiences? Do you know people who have similar journeys that our characters do? These conversations will allow students to make connections while reading and analyzing texts. Anchor Texts: *These texts will be provided to students in class. Please ask about them, and consider reading the entire text together.*1.) “Funny in Farsi”2.) “Of Beetles and Angels”3.) “1905 Einstein’s Miracle Year”4.) “Shutting Out the Sky” Assessment Dates:Short quizzes will be used after we feel the students have mastered the content. As of now, here is the quiz schedule. Please note: These dates may change based on our pacing, but we will update Weebly as soon as possible. April 28 May 18 Department Final Exam- May 25 A study guide will be provided by May 20th. Please help your student memorize the important information. Then practice applying it as you talk about text in the world. Formal Writing Task: Final Copy due May 23 Students will explore the picture book The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Then they will determine whose story they would like to tell through memoir. Students will select a purpose, structure and central idea. Then they will employ at least two rhetorical devices and establish a clear mood and tone to further develop the memoir. Incrementals:Part 1: due In class on May 9th: Students brainstorm small moments from images and list on chart paper; All students select the image they want to develop by the end of this lesson. Part 2: In class on May 11th:Students will develop their ideas by completing two graphic organizers. A timeline will establish the chronological order of the image and a beginning/middle/end graphic organizer will place ideas in a logical sequence. Part 3: Started in Class on May 15; Due May 18:Draft the ideas:Students will develop their first draft. The lesson focus will be to develop the central idea by using figurative language. Students will be expected to include at least two examples of figurative language in the draft. Final Drafts due May 23 With the final drafting process, parent help is greatly appreciated! The final copy of the Formal Writing Task should either be written in pen on loose leaf paper or typed and either printed or emailed to Mrs. Byrnes or Mr. Berenson. Parents, you can help with this process by supervising students during their copying to make sure their handwriting is neat, they use proper mechanics, and they use the feedback their teachers gave them on previous drafts. Thank you for your help! Culminating Activity Socratic SeminarStudents will discuss a guiding question that allows them to refer back to text. There will be three stages to this project, a planning phase, a question creation phase, and finally the culminating discussion. The question will be Which author best conveys their purpose through language and rhetoric? Students must understand each story, the author’s purpose for writing, and the rhetorical strategies and figurative language each writer uses. They will debate this topic after planning and creating questions. Students will be graded based upon their planning and understanding of each text, their ability to create higher order questions, and their participation and listening skills during the discussion itself. May 8th: First articleMay 10th:Second articleMay 12th: Develop Questions and Answers for SocraticMay 17th: Socratic Seminar Independent Reading:In addition to our class work, students need to be reading each night for at least 20 minutes. Throughout this unit, we will provide the novels and small assignments that students need to complete to show evidence that they are reading each night. On Targets: #-Due Date607:608: 13-4/28/17Ruby Holler: extended response and vocabulary packet to be completed and handed in on 4/28 along with book. ]Love that Dog: comprehension questions and guided reading questions due in class 4/28 along with book. 14-5/12/17Absolutely Normal Chaos: Two RACE questions based on a passage from the novel are due 5/12 along with book. The Ungifted: 11 Comprehension questions are due in class 5/12 along with book. 15-5/26/17The Ungifted:11 Comprehension questions are due in class 5/12 along with book. Beauty: Poem creation and analysis of chapter 3 due in class 5/26 along with book.