Book Club Curriculum Project

Name(s): Andrea Gillis

Book: Something About America

Title of Activity:Pre-Reading Activity= Introducing “scars”, “conflict”, and a brief overview of Yugoslavia’s history

Language Objective:

  • The learner will be able to explain in writing and in speaking the meanings of these words: conflict and emotional and physical scars
  • The learner will converse with a partner to discuss their own examples of “physical” or “emotional” scars so that he/she can make connections to the narrator and other characters in Testa’s poems
  • Students will practice repeating the word “conflict” with the correct pronunciation before they discuss and define this term
  • You can have a ______with a friend if you are mad at each other for saying hurtful words
  • You would have a ______with your parents if you disagree about when to do your homework

Content Objective:

  • The learner will be able to identify different types of “conflict” and determine the difference/intersection between “emotional” or “physical” scars in Testa’s poems by using a graphic organizers
  • The learner will be introduced to a brief overview of Yugoslavia’s history to gain a better understanding of the landscape and emotional climate “Testa’s” family decided to leave behind as they resettled in America. This will help the reader to better understand Testa, her parents, and their thinking.

Please identify the pedagogical, linguistic, or literacy principles that ground your project. (These principles should come from course materials.) In one or two sentences, explain the principle and provide a reference from course materials.

  • Building prior knowledge – It is important to build and activate background knowledge to help ELLs make meaning from new texts (Smiley & Salsbury, 44; SIOP)
  • Using visuals – Providing visual support helps students envision and understand the content better and it provides students with an additional medium to comprehend what is going on (Faltis, 138-140)
  • Exposing students to and having them apply academic language – Students need opportunities to hear, use, and learn from academic language in order to have access to the curriculum. It’s important to specifically identify areas of language to focus on within content instruction (Scarcella; Faltis & Coulter, 76)
  • Connected Discourse- encourage students to speak without bidding for the floor and to build and extend what others have contributed; students can address each other instead of the teacher to enhance the conversation (Faltis, 171)

Please describe in detail how you envision the activity to be carried out. You can write this as a bulleted list or in a paragraph. The goal is to make the directions sufficiently clear that a reader could imagine and carry out the activity. If it’s not obvious, also explain how your artifact fits in.

  • Explain to students that Something About America is a book of poems that explores how a young girl (the narrator) deals with scars and conflicts. Before we begin reading, we need to explore and relate to the types of scars and conflicts the narrator encounters so that we understand her life story better.
  • Post the Venn diagram on the board. Label it “Emotional Scars”(picture of faces labeled with different emotions) on one side and “Physical Scars”(with a picture of a body by it) on the other side. Have students sit with partners and provide each student a copy of the diagram (to be filled out later).
  • T o introduce these concepts, I would show students the scar on my right knee from my knee surgery and discuss how I am not embarrassed to show this scar, but I don’t like touching it because it is still numb. I would show them more scars I have on my knees and hands.
  • Next, show students a picture of my dad and discuss how he died 6 years ago, but I still experience a mix of emotions: sadness of missing him, fondness of his memory, etc.
  • Explain to students that the following topics are ones that need to be treated with the utmost respect and some topics may be hard to discuss. In partners, students will decide to categorize the following choices into either “emotional scars” or “physical scars”: being hit by someone you love and trust; falling in love and breaking up; burns from a roadside bomb exploding in a war zone; losing a friendship; wounds from getting into a fight with someone; having others gossip about you; scrapes from falling off of a bike;feeling embarrassed about one’s family
  • Once partners categorize the choices, have students view the following poems about scars created using Storybird: (Students will be creating their own poems on Storybird as a final project)
  • Discuss as a class where/why/how “emotional scars” and “physical scars” intersect and how they are similar. At this point, I will also open the floor to students to allow them to share about their own “emotional” and “physical” scars, but I’ll preface this conversation with admitting that deep, emotional scars can be difficult to share, so students do not need to reveal their deep ones if they are not comfortable doing so.
  • Explain to students that Maria Testa’s book of poems, Something About America, describes the emotional and physical scars the narrator suffers from fleeing their war-torn homeland of Kosova, Yugoslavia and resettling in America. The narrator, who primarily grows up in the U.S., experiences America very differently from her parents, who have roots and loyalty to their homeland. I will read an excerpt from Something About America and model how to categorize the “scar” the main character (seemingly Testa) describes and fill in the Venn diagram. Students will be using and filling in the Venn diagram throughout their reading.
  • PRIOR TO EXPLAINING YUGOSLAVIA’S HISTORY, I WOULD CONSULT MATTHEW- whose parents were immigrants from Serbia-TO SEE IF HE WOULD BE INTERESTED SHARING MORE OF HIS INSIGHT INTO YUGOSLAVIA’S WAR-TORN HISTORY (NOTE: Yugoslavia became the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia after World War II. It was composed of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, as well as two provinces, Kosovo, and Vojvodina.)
  • Write the word “conflict” on the board and have students echo the way you pronounce it (low voice; high voice, screechy voice, etc.). Have students repeat the word “conflict” in unison when the blank appears in the following sentences:

-You can have a ______with a friend if you are mad at each other for saying hurtful words

-You would have a ______with your parents if you disagree about when to do your homework

-The U.S. is in a______with some countries in the Middle East because the countries do not hold the same beliefs about a lot of things. They are fighting a war because of their ______(s).

-You might have a ______with a teacher if you disagree about grade you received on a paper

  • Have students discuss in partners, what they think the word “conflict” means. Select some volunteers to share their definitions and have students add to/respond to those definitions by using connected discourse.
  • Show students this map of the former Yugoslavia (map) and pair it with a description of the following timeline (timeline) about Yugoslavia’s sordid past. Explainthe geography/physical boundaries of Yugoslavia used to include six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro, as well as two provinces, Kosovo, and Vojvodina. Have Matthew, if he is willing, help to explain the CONFLICTS related to the emotional climate, different attitudes, and history (his parents’ personal history) of the former nation. If he is not willing to share, explain to students that the nation’s past was complicated by the following “conflicts”: ethnic divisions among all of the republics (had animosity toward each other); civil unrest; guerilla warfare; corruption; a leader charged with abuse of power
  • Post the following graphic organizer on the board. I will read an excerpt from Something About America and model how to categorize the type of conflict described in the poem

Conflicts from War / Conflicts at Home / Conflicts at School / Conflicts in the Community / Other Conflicts

Students will be using and filling in this organizer while they are reading

  • Explain that we are now going to read Something About America. As we read, we are going to fill out the graphic organizers to see if we can answer the following questions by referring to our graphic organizers:
  • What emotional and physical scarsdoes the narrator reveal about herself? What emotional and physical scars does the narrator reveal about her dad? What emotional and physical scars does the narrator reveal about her mom?
  • What conflicts were related to the following: war; home life; school; community; other
  • When we have finished the book, we will use our organizers to discuss what we have read and later create our own stories/poems about scars and conflicts on Storybird.