When Life Brings Challenges
Unifying Concept: Cultural Effects on Self-Identity / Reading Focus: Literature / Writing Focus: Argumentative
Overview:In the unit, When Life Brings Challenges, students examine the development of themes in the vignettes of the text, The House on Mango Street, such as the power of language, the struggle to define self-identity, and how gender and culture affect one’s outlook. This unit will be approximately five weeks in length.
Purpose:
To identify themes presented in the text and argue how they are developed through motifs, symbols, figurative language usage, character development, and plot structural devices.
To write an argumentative piece citing textual evidence from multiple texts, which answers an essential question: What influences identity most- nature or nurture?
To conduct a short research project from print and digital sources in order to help answer the question.
To connect the themes about identity in the text to the argument essay.
Enduring Understandings:
  1. As people mature, perceptions of the self and personal responsibilities change.
  2. Identity can be formed through a combination of nature and nurture.
  3. Multiple perspectives matter.
/ Essential Questions:
  1. How does environment shape identity?
  2. What influences identity most- nature or nurture?
  3. What composes identity?
  4. How do people remain as authentic selves as they move in and out of different communities, cultures, and contexts?
  5. What about identity is permanent? What do people have the power to change within?
  6. What do people gain when learning about the lived experiences of other people?
  7. How does an individual benefit from living in a diverse society?
  8. How is empathy a seed of social action?
  9. What does it mean to be “mature”?

Target Standards are emphasized during the quarter and used in a formal assessment to evaluate student mastery.
Highly-Leveraged1 are the most essential for students to learn because they have endurance (knowledge and skills are relevant throughout a student's lifetime); leverage (knowledge and skills are used across multiple content areas); and essentiality (knowledge and skills are necessary for success in future courses or grade levels).
8.RL.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
8.RL.3 Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
8.W.1 Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
  1. Introduce claim(s), acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
  2. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant evidence, using accurate, credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text.
  3. Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
  4. Establish and maintain a formal style.
f. Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.
8.L.5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
  1. Interpret figures of speech (e.g. verbal irony, puns) in context.
  2. Use the relationship between particular words to better understand each of the words.
c. Distinguish among the connotations (associations) of words with similar denotations (definitions) (e.g., bullheaded, willful, firm, persistent, resolute).
Supporting are related standards that support the highly-leveraged standards in and across grade levels.
8.RL.7Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.
8.RL.9Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.
8.RI.7 Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums (e.g., print or digital text, video, multimedia) to present a particular topic or idea.
8.RI.9 Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation.
8.W.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
8.W.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
8. SL.3 Delineate a speaker’s argument and specific claims, evaluating the soundness of the reasoning and relevance and sufficiency of the evidence and identifying when irrelevant evidence is introduced.
8.SL.4 Present claims and findings, emphasizing salient points in a focused, coherent manner with relevant evidence, sound valid reasoning, and well-chosen details; use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.
Constant Standards are addressed routinely every quarter[MM1].
8.RL.1,10
8.RI.1,10
8.W.4,5,10
8.SL.1,2,6
8.L.1,2,6
Selected Readings of Complex Texts
Extended/Short Texts:
The House on Mango Street by Sanda Cisneros
Additional Instructional Resources
Electronic Resources and Alternative Media:
“The 9/11 Disappeareds” by Miriam Louie (from The Nation)
“American Identity: Ideas, Not Ethnicity” by Michael J. Friedman (from IIP Digital)
“Composite Nation” lecture from Frederick Douglass in the Parker Fraternity Course available at Library of Congress
Performance Assessments
Formative Assessments:
Annotated bibliography/research log
Argument paragraph practices
Dialectical journal entries / Summative Assessments:
Research project for debate – What makes a person who they are? What influences identity most – nature or nurture?
Debate can take place live in the classroom, online in a forum (such as edmodo.com), or on paper as long as the research and practice is well done.
SchoolCity 10-question summative assessment

ELA, Office of Curriculum Development©Page 1 of 3

1This definition for highly-leveraged standards was adapted from the “power standard” definition on the website of Millis Public Schools, K-12, in Massachusetts, USA.

ELA, Office of Curriculum Development©Page 1 of 3

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