The Rock and the River Kekla Magoon English Language Arts Curriculum 10 th Grade Grimsley High School Desiree Corbett, Farran Mateen, and Athena Mobley
Guilford County Schools: SELECTION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS/EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (IFA-P) • The Administration believes that suitability is the major criterion for the selection of educational resources. The professional staff must use professional selection criteria and educational relevance rather than personal opinions, values, and beliefs in the selection of resources. Materials selected for media center or classroom use must fulfill a curricular or leisure reading need, and meet the following criteria: A. Educational resources should (criteria not ranked): • 1. be selected according to the general educational goals of the school district, the goals and objectives of the individual schools and specific courses. • 2. be appropriate for the age, interests, abilities, learning styles, social development, and maturity levels of the students. • 3. provide information to motivate students and staff to examine their own attitudes and behavior, to comprehend their duties, responsibilities, rights, and privileges as participating citizens in our society, and to make informed judgments in their daily lives.
Guilford County Schools: SELECTION OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS/EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (IFA-P) • 4. represent the diversity of religious, ethnic, political, and cultural values held in a pluralistic society. • 5. illustrate the contributions made by various groups to our national heritage and to the world. • 6. illustrate historical and contemporary forces in society to enable users to recognize and understand social, economic, personal, and political problems. • 7. provide various points of view about issues, including those considered to be controversial.
Building A Unit • Reviewing current student skill levels and data from previous units • Focusing on Common Core ELA Skills to be assessed in new unit • Reviewing available materials and select text • Design unit with activities, formative assessment and summative assessment
Historical Context: The Civil Rights Movement • Prior Knowledge: Civil – Gandhi's “On Civil Disobedience” Disobedience – MLK “Letter From Birmingham Jail” – JFK “1963 Civil Rights Black Panthers Address” • Unit Background: – Author’s Note
Summary The Rock and the River is a bildungsroman (classic coming-of- age story) told from the perspective of a 13-year-old African American male, Sam Childs. Coming-of-age stories are generally set in tumultuous times where the conflict is central to the protagonist’s maturation throughout the story. As it is set in Chicago in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, the novel focuses on Sam navigating internal and external conflicts that lead to his eventual enlightenment by the end of the text. Torn between two extremely contrasting ways of dealing with racial intolerance (civil disobedience vs. active opposition), Sam has to make decisions that impact not only himself, but also his family, girlfriend, friends, and community. At the climax of the novel. Sam is faced with a decision that could ultimately force him to choose a path. However, by the novel’s conclusion based on his growth and experiences, Sam realizes that he does not have to follow either path, but that he must create his own.
Why The Rock and The River? At the end of last year, as a team, we decided that The Rock and the River would be ideal because students will be able to connect with a protagonist who is close in age and experiences many of the same conflicts and life choices that they currently facing. Since this is the first independent reading assignment students are given, we needed an engaging text that students could comfortably navigate without teacher scaffolding both at school and at home. This particular novel was chosen because of past success with our team (as well as a previous English II teacher). With limited resources, the team determined the novel’s past success in engaging reluctant and struggling readers merited purchasing additional copies out-of-pocket so that all students could have a copy to take home to read. By teaching The Rock and the River we are able to introduce difficult ELA Common Core skills on a level that students can access before moving on to more complex texts at the end of the year. The novel also allows students to activate prior knowledge from our Argumentative Unit that includes US Seminal Documents and various instances of civil disobedience that have occurred in the world as opposition to infringement upon human rights.
ELA Common Core Standards: Literacy: Reading Literature 9-10 • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 – Assessing Student Comprehension: Cite strong and thorough – Explicit Questions Examples: textual evidence to support – What seems to be a major conflict analysis of what the text says between Stick and his father? explicitly as well as inferences – Whose death does Sam learn about in drawn from the text. the beginning of the chapter? Give one quote to support your answer. – Inference Question Examples: – Explain the effect of the simile in the third paragraph on page 96. – Why does Sam seem confused with his father’s reaction to finding him out after dark? Why do you think there has been a change in his father?
ELA Common Core Standards: Literacy: Reading Literature 9-10 • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2 – Assessing Student Determine a theme or central Comprehension: idea of a text and analyze in – Theme example question: detail its development over – Leroy tells Sam that he “can’t be the course of the text , the rock and river.” What does this including how it emerges and mean? is shaped and refined by – Objective Summary example specific details ; provide an question: objective summary of the – Using the text as a basis for your text. answer, describe how you think each of the following characters feels at this point: Stick, Sam, Roland.
ELA Common Core Standards: Literacy: Reading Literature 9-10 • Character Graphic Organizer: • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3 Analyze how complex characters (e.g ., those with multiple or conflicting motivations ) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
ELA Common Core Standards: Literacy: Reading Literature 9-10 • Subplot Graphic Organizer: • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5 Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g ., parallel plots ), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks ) create such effects as mystery, tension , or surprise .
ELA Common Core Standards: Literacy: Reading Literature: Writing 9-10 • CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection , and research. Student Reflection about The Rock and the River : • “Overall, it was good. I don’t know how many times I’ll say it again, but it was my • favorite book of the year so far. Great story with a great message. The message was “you can’t be the rock and the river.” The rock is what is near the river, but doesn’t get to move as the river does. The river is what moves constantly and touches the rock, in other words, you can’t the be the person that stand by and does nothing as well as be the person that takes action…I believe that people should read it, so that they can see that you can’t always take action in a situation. There are somethings that you can do nothing about no matter what. Everyone had a different idea as to what the message was. People just have different minds and think differently, but we all got a positive message out of it. ~current Grimsley sophomore •
Within an English II classroom, we survey non-fiction and fiction texts from all over the world (including the United States). Our goal is to help students meet ELA Common Core 9-10 standards. As learners, students will be exposed to other viewpoints (that will often contradict their own). This is not presented in any way to change their viewpoint, but to provide students with a variety of perspectives. Conclusion
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