MISD Thematic Units to Teach Michigan’s ELA GLCE’s—Unit 8.1 Appendix Revised

Disposition: Reflective Inquiry—Theme: Familiarity alters perception.

1a. Disposition, Theme, and Unit Essential Questions [Lesson 1]

1b.Prompt [Lesson 1]

2aPeer Editing Questions [Lesson 2]

2b.Review of Writing: Publishing Final Copy [Lesson 2]

2c.Rubric [Lesson 2]

3a.Talking to the Text [Lessons 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, and 15]

3b.Talking to the Text Rubric [Lessons 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, and 15]

3c1-3. Linking text: “Brainy Echidna Proves Looks Aren’t Everything” [Lesson 3]

3d1-3.“Brainy Echidna Proves Looks Aren’t Everything” Close and Critical [Lesson 3]

3e.Quick Write Procedure [Lesson 3]

3f.Vocabulary in Context Strategy [Lessons 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]

4a.Strategies That Work [Lesson 4]

4b.Procedure for Think Aloud [Lessons 4 and 6]

4c1-2.Genre: Realistic Fiction and Student Bookmark [Lesson 4]

  1. Character Chart [Lesson 5]

6a. Character Interactions [Lesson 6]

6b1-3 Focus Question #1, Focus Question Directions, and Rubric [Lessons 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 16]

6c1-4. Alike But Different Procedure and Example [Lesson 6, 7]

7a1-3. 2 Column Notes Procedure and Example [Lesson 7]

7b. Focus Question #2 [Lesson 7]

7c1-2. Grammar Research and Inquiry Grammar Lesson Plan

7c3. Participial Phrases [Lesson 7]

7d1-3. Linking text: “Does Familiarity Breed Contempt” [Lesson 7]

7e1-3. “Does Familiarity Breed Contempt” Close and Critical [Lesson 7]

7f1-5. Linking Text: “Raymond’s Run” [Lesson 7]

7g1-3. “Raymond’s Run” Close and Critical [Lesson 7]

8a1-2. Escalation of a Problem chart and discussion questions [Lesson 8]

8b. Focus Question #3 [Lesson 8]

9a1-3. “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Group Summary, and Optional Close and Critical Reading [Lesson 9]

10a. Focus Question #4 [Lesson 10]

11a1-2. Chapter 7 Readers Theater Script [Lesson 11]

11b1-2.Dashes and Colons [Lesson 11]

11c.Focus Question #5 [Lesson 11]

12a1-5. “The Anthropology of Belonging,” Highlighting Activity, and Jigsaw Activity [Lesson 12]

12b1-2.The Infinitive [Lesson 12]

12c.Focus Question #6 [Lesson 12]

13a. The Gerund [Lesson 13]

13b.List of Character reasons for fighting [Lesson 13]

14-15a.List of Conflicts by Chapter [Lesson 14-15]

14-15b1-3Chapter 11 Close and Critical [Lesson 14-15]

16a1-2Focus Question #7 and poem interpretation [Lesson 14-15]

17-18a. Attacking the Prompt [Lesson 17-18]

17-18b. Focus Question #8 [Lesson 17-18]

17-18c.Response to Literature Rubric [Lesson 17-18]

19a1-3.Research on Socio-Economic Classes: The Outsiders [Lesson 19]

20a1-7.The Outsiders Movie Review, ACT Prompt and Rubrics [Lesson 20]

20b. Highlight Activity for Movie Review [Lesson 20]

20c1-3. Movie Review Close and Critical Reading [Lesson 20]

20d. Music Extension [Lesson 20]

MS 8.1 The Outsiders Appendix 1 © Macomb Intermediate School District 2009

Themes and Essential Questions

Disposition: Reflective Inquiry

Theme

  • Theme: Familiarity alters perspective

Essential Questions

  • How do I learn to learn?
  • How do I discover new knowledge?
  • How do I pursue a problem to the solution?
  • How do I apply my learning?
  • How do I see all situations in a bigger context?
  • How do I respond to new situations or individuals different from myself?

Appendix #1a

Directions:

Getting along with others is important in life, but sometimes we don’t like someone or they do not like us because we are different in some way. This is sometimes called prejudice. Prejudice means forming an opinion without looking at the facts carefully—like saying, “He has a tattoo, so he must be a crook.” Or “She got arrested, so she must be guilty.” Or “She doesn’t wear cool clothes, so she must be a loser.” Prejudice is often directed at different races (black and white), different social classes (rich and poor) and/or different religions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, etc.).

Write about the theme: prejudice

Do one of the following:

Write about a time, when you or someone you know faced prejudice.

OR

Discuss what a person can learn from dealing with prejudice.

OR

Persuade readers that prejudice is wrong. (Give specific examples).

OR

Write about the theme in your own way.

You may use examples from real life, from what you read or watch, or from your imagination. Your writing will be read by interested adults.

Use the paper provided for notes, freewriting, outlining, clustering, or writing your rough draft. If you need to make a correction, cross out the error and write the correction above or next to it.

You should give careful thought to revision (rethinking ideas) and proofreading (correctingspelling, capitalization, and punctuation). Use the rubric and checklist provided to help improve your writing.

(Optional: You may use a dictionary, thesaurus, spelling book, and/or grammar book.)

Appendix #1b

Peer Editing Questions

  • Is the central idea or point of the writing clear?
  • Is the central idea or point supported by important and relevant details, examples, and/or anecdotes?
  • Does the writing begin with an interesting and engaging lead, continue with a middle that supports and develops the point, and conclude with an ending that summarizes the point?
  • Is the writing interesting with engaging words and different sentence lengths and types?
  • What do I, as the listener, think is good about the writing?
  • Do I have questions and/or suggestions for the writer?

Appendix #2a

Review of Writing: Publishing Final Copy

DIRECTIONS:

Now you will be doing three things: revising your paper (which means to rethink your ides); polishing your paper (which means to edit and proofread); and recopying your paper as neatly as possible.

Use the following checklist as you revise and edit the writing that you have done. When you are finished revising, you must make a final copy of your paper. Then, proofread your final copy to make sure that all of your revisions have been made.

CHECKLIST FOR REVISION:

  1. Do I have a clear central idea that connects to the topic?
  2. Do I stay focused on my central idea?
  3. Do I support my central ideas with important and relevant details/examples?
  4. Do I need to take out details/examples that DO NOT support my central idea?
  5. Is my writing organized and complete, with a clear beginning, middle, and end?
  6. Do I use a variety of interesting words, phrases, and/or sentences?

CHECKLIST FOR EDITING

  1. Have I checked and corrected my spelling to help readers understand my writing?
  2. Have I checked and corrected my punctuation and capitalization to help readers understand my writing?

CHECKLIST FOR PROOFREADING:

  1. Is everything in my final copy just the way I want it?

Reread your writing. You should cross out or erase any errors you make. You will have as much time as you need.

Appendix #2b

MS 8.1 The Outsiders Appendix 1 © Macomb Intermediate School District 2009

Rubric

Writing from Knowledge and Experience

Characteristics / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1
Content and Ideas / The writing is exceptionally clear and focused. Ideas and content are thoroughly developed with relevant details and examples where appropriate. / The writing is clear and focused. Ideas and content are well developed with relevant details and examples where appropriate. / The writing is generally clear and focused. Ideas and content are developed with relevant details and examples where appropriate, although there may be some unevenness. / The writing is somewhat clear and focused. Ideas and content are developed with limited or partially successful use of examples and details. / The writing is only occasionally clear and focused. Ideas and content are underdeveloped. / The writing is generally unclear and unfocused. Ideas and content are not developed or connected.
Organization / The writer’s control over organization and the connections between ideas move the reader smoothly and naturally through the text. / The writer’s control over organization and the connections between ideas effectively move the reader through the text. / The response is generally coherent, and its organization is functional. / There may be evidence of an organizational structure, but it may be artificial or ineffective. / There may be little evidence of organizational structure. / There may be no noticeable organizational structure.
Style and Voice / The writer shows a mature command of language including precise word choice that results in a compelling piece of writing. / The writer shows a command of language including precise word choice. / The writer’s command of language, including word choice, supports meaning. / Vocabulary may be basic. / Vocabulary may be limited.
Conventions / Tight control over language use and mastery of writing conventions contribute to the effect of the response. / The language is well controlled, and occasional lapses in writing conventions are hardly noticeable. / Lapses in writing conventions are not distracting. / Incomplete mastery of over writing conventions and language use may interfere with meaning some of the time. / Limited control over writing conventions may make the writing difficult to understand. / Lack of control over writing conventions may make the writing difficult to understand.

Not ratable if: a) off topic b) illegible c) written in language other than English d) blank/refused to respond

Appendix #2c

MS 8.1 The Outsiders Appendix 1 © Macomb Intermediate School District 2009

Talking To the Text

What is T4? Tending to tough teenagers? Taking time to tango? Teaching turtles time travel?

  • an acronym, one of those alphabetic abbreviations that can confuse but save time
  • an RA reading strategy
  • based on the process of Thinking Aloud
  • thus, it is a metacognitive conversation that makes thinking visible
  • an activity through which readers make meaning by considering the words, context, schema, etc. of a passage
  • not done with the mouth, not done with the eyes, it’s a brain function
  • asks readers to question, predict, visualize, connect, summarize,and fix up
  • a skill that can start tentatively and grow to increase understanding, becoming as intense as a presidential debate

Steps to T4

First:Model and practice Think Alouds, with the bookmark in your packet, until students “get” the meaning of question, predict, visualize, connect, summarize, and fix up

Second: Show the models in this packet to your students. Then model T4 with a short

piece of your content, from a textbook or an article.

Third: Assess student work with the rubric in your packet, on the overhead orElmo, as a class, then in pairs. Then introduce the Self-Assessment.

Four: After three T4s, have students select their best effort and staple it with a self- assessment on top of the others, and turn them in to the teacher.

Five:The teacher keeps these in files in a classroom crate. At progress report time they are checked to see if there is improvement.

Six:The teacher puts the material on a quiz or test to see if the T4s are enhancing learning. Teacher can give extra credit points for evidence of T4 on tests.

Seven: Repeat, adding skills as students are ready for them.

Appendix #3a

Talking To the Text (T4) Rubric

Talking to the text, thinking about your thinking, making the invisible visible, metacognition

You will earn a grade of 1-5 based on how well you critically think about the text and how well you show that thinking.

Student: ______Text: ______

ScoreExplanation

0Has not completed the assignment and made no attempt at metacognition.

1Attempts very little talking to the text.

2Presents little evidence of interacting with the text. Uses one or two strategies, perhaps only summarizing information, or just circling the “big words.”

3Presents evidence of some interaction with the text, clearly trying to use strategies such as questioning and connecting, Focuses on surface or literal meaning. Struggles to “dig deep.”

4Presents a reasonable demonstration of thought process. Mature thinking is obvious. Two or more of these are clear: summarizing main ideas, questioning, commenting, connecting, predicting.

5Interacts with text in a reflective, thoughtful, and insightful way. (Or Presents reflective, thoughtful, insightful interaction with text.) Very clearly and thoroughly demonstrates most or all of the following: synthesizing main ideas, questioning, commenting, connecting (text to me/text/world), predicting and confirming. T4 comments go beyond the text; graphic notes aid in thinking.

(Courtesy of Amy Jo Yeokum UCS)

Appendix #3b

MISD Literature Unit 8.1—Reflective Inquiry—Linking Text

THEME: Familiarity alters perspective.

Brainy Echidna Proves Looks Aren’t Everythingby Natalie Angier,June 9, 2009

Auscape International

A MIXED BAG The long-beaked echidna is hard to find but easy to appreciate.

If you wanted to push yourself to the outermost chalk line of human endurance, you might consider an ultramarathon, or a solo row across the Atlantic Ocean, or being nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Or you could try studying the long-beaked echidna, one of the oldest, rarest, shyest, silliest-looking yet potentially most illuminating mammals on earth.

Muse Opiang was working as a field research officer when he became seized by a passion for the long-beaked echidna, or Zaglossus bartoni, which are found only in the tropical rain forests of New Guinea and a scattering of adjacent islands. He had seen them once or twice in captivity and in photographs — plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole, pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them. He knew that the mosaic effect was no mere sight gag: as one of just three surviving types of the group of primitive egg-laying mammals called monotremes, the long-beaked echidna is a genuine living link between reptiles and birds on one branch, and more familiar placental mammals like ourselves on the next.

Mr. Opiang also knew that, whereas members of the two other monotreme genuses, the duck-billed platypus and short-beaked echidna, had been studied for years — last May, the entire genetic code of the platypus was published to great fanfare — the life of the long-beaked echidna remained obscure and unsung.

Appendix #3c1

“We knew nothing about it,” he said in a phone interview. “Scientists had written that it was impossible to study,” he said, adding with a laugh, “I took that as a challenge.”

In a recent issue of The Journal of Mammalogy, Mr. Opiang offers the first glimpse of the natural history and ecology of an immaculately private nocturnalist with a surprisingly well-endowed brain. And while Mr. Opiang’s report shows that the doubters were technically wrong, the grueling details of his field methods suggest that as a workaday rule, “impossible to study” still suits Zaglossus quite well.

“Muse has amazing perseverance,” said Debra Wright, who was Mr. Opiang’s honors thesis adviser. “I don’t think that anyone else on earth could have done what he did.”

The research and Mr. Opiang’s training were initially supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx Zoo, but Mr. Opiang, who pronounces his first name Moo-say and is now working on his doctorate through the University of Tasmania, has since cofounded his own organization, the Papua New Guinea Institute of Biological Research.

Reproductively, monotremes are like a VCR-DVD unit, an embodiment of a technology in transition. They lay leathery eggs, as reptiles do, but then feed the so-called puggles that hatch with milk — though drizzled out of glands in the chest rather than expressed through nippled teats, and sometimes so enriched with iron that it looks pink.

Monotreme sex determination also holds its allure. In most mammals, a single set of XX chromosomes signifies a girl, a set of XY specifies a boy. For reasons that remain mysterious, monotremes have multiple sets of sex chromosomes, four or more parading pairs of XXs and XYs, or something else altogether: a few of those extra sex chromosomes look suspiciously birdlike. Another avianlike feature is the cloaca, the single orifice through which an echidna or platypus voids waste, has sex and lays eggs, and by which the group gets its name.

However they conduct their affairs, monotremes do it remarkably well. Not only are they the oldest surviving mammalian group, but individual monotremes can live 50 years or longer. Peggy Rismiller of the University of Adelaide has studied the short-beaked echidna, or spiny anteater, since 1988. “One of the females we’ve been radiotracking since 1988 is at least 45, and she’s still reproducing,” Dr. Rismiller said.

Dr. Rismiller also pointed out that short-beaked echidnas are Australia’s most widely distributed mammals, adapting to life in the desert, along on the coast, in the rain forest, up above the snowline, all the while feeding on any invertebrates they can disinter. Even in summer they maintain their internal body temperature at a temperate 88 degrees Fahrenheit, and on a winter night they may lapse into a torpor, their core body thermostat dropping down as low as 40 degrees — a cryogenic skill of interest to surgeons and space enthusiasts alike.

Echidnas keep their cool, all right. “They’re one of the most pacifistic mammals,” Dr. Rismiller said. “Nobody bothers them; they don’t bother anybody. There’s a lot we could learn from them.” And in that level head sits a mighty brain. Among humans, the neocortex that allows us to reason and remember accounts for 30 percent of the brain; in echidnas, that figure is 50 percent.

Appendix #3c2

If only they could stand to teach us. Short-beaked echidnas put up with people, however grudgingly, but as Mr. Opiang learned, the long-beaks of New Guinea shun all signs of human habitation, perhaps because, being twice the size of short-beaked echidnas, they are prized as bushmeat by local hunters and their dogs. “They’re not attracted to baits,” he said. “You can’t catch them with traps for tagging.”

To reach them, you must hike for miles into the highlands, on treacherously steep and slippery terrain where it rains 275 inches a year. “It’s one of the wettest places on earth,” Dr. Wright said.

That rain also wipes away signs of echidna foraging and denning. It took Mr. Opiang months of searching before he found his first echidna. Then he discovered that if he followed trails of freshly dug nose pokes at night — the holes that echidnas made with their beaks as they foraged for earthworms — he could find a den where a sated echidna would be hiding. He learned to grab them under the stomach, where there were no spines. “If you hold them against yourself, they’re friendly and they won’t struggle,” he said. Over five years he managed to capture, measure and, in most cases, attach radio transmitters to 22 individuals. Among his intriguing early findings: unlike most mammals, the females are bigger than the males, and the toothless, hairless tubular beaks through which they aim their ribbony tongues are longer, too.