Language A 8: To Kill a Mockingbird. MYP unit question. How do I learn from others?

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1 MYP unit planner Unit title Lasting Legacies Teacher(s) Subject and grade level Time frame and duration Language A 8: To Kill a Mockingbird 6-8 weeks Stage 1: Integrate significant concept, area of interaction and unit question Area of interaction focus Which area of interaction will be our focus? Why have we chosen this? Health and Social Education: Historical events and human forces shape relationships between black and white, rich and poor, educated and uneducated cultures of our country Significant concept(s) What are the big ideas? What do we want our students to retain for years into the future? People of all races and ages can teach us life lessons. MYP unit question How do I learn from others? Assessment What task(s) will allow students the opportunity to respond to the unit question? What will constitute acceptable evidence of understanding? How will students show what they have understood? Response to Literature: Students will create Scout s scrapbook incorporating pictures, objects, quotes and journal entries written in the style of Scout Finch. Scrapbook pages will focus on five characters who influenced Scout during the course of the novel. Text must be extracted from the novel and used in the journals. Which specific MYP objectives will be addressed during this unit? Content understand and analyse the language, content, structure, meaning and significance of both familiar and previously unseen oral, written and visual texts Style and Language use language to narrate, describe, analyse, explain, argue, persuade, inform, entertain and express feelings use appropriate and varied register, vocabulary and idiom Which MYP assessment criteria will be used? Criterion A: Content

2 Criterion C: Style and Language Stage 2: Backward planning: from the assessment to the learning activities through inquiry Content What knowledge and/or skills (from the course overview) are going to be used to enable the student to respond to the unit question? What (if any) state, provincial, district, or local standards/skills are to be addressed? How can they be unpacked to develop the significant concept(s) for stage 1? Content: analyze text, entertain through journalistic writing, understand dialect, idiom, vocabulary Colorado Standard 1: Make connections to prior knowledge and experience to understand events, ideas, and themes in text. Colorado Standard 6: Use inferential and critical thinking to understand point of view. ETIL standards 2 and 5 Approaches to learning How will this unit contribute to the overall development of subject-specific and general approaches to learning skills? Work displays illustrative detail and support Reflects high degree of imagination Register sounds like Scout Finch Learning experiences Employs a wide and effective range of appropriate vocabulary, idiom Infrequent errors Teaching strategies How will students know what is expected of them? Will they see examples, rubrics, templates? How will students acquire the knowledge and practise the skills required? How will they practise applying these? Do the students have enough prior knowledge? How will we know? How will we use formative assessment to give students feedback during the unit? What different teaching methodologies will we employ? How are we differentiating teaching and learning for all? How have we made provision for those learning in a language other than their mother tongue? How have we considered those with special educational needs? Knowing what is Expected: Students will be given the assessment task the first week of the unit and will be shown exemplars. The rubric will be discussed many times along the way so students can see what they need to do in order to be successful. Practicing the skills students will analyze sections of the novel and scrapbook entries from past students for illustrative detail and support students will find idioms in the text and analyze their own writing for some idiom students will peer edit and do various grammar warm-ups so they know how to look for mistakes. Students will learn from quickwrites, quizzes and feedback on their writing on various prompts. Have they mastered the same tone as the author they re imitating? Are they organized? Formative Assessments: Students will complete a character collage as a precursor to the scrapbook using pictures and phrases from magazines and newspapers to prove that a specific character influences others. Phrases could be direct from the text or generalized. Students will take quick quizzes as they progress through the novel. Quotation Assumptions: quotes are pulled from the text and students make inferences about the person s character based on what was said. This will prepare them for using textual examples in their scrapbook. Answers will be checked by the teacher. Methodologies:

3 Students will use Think Pair Share on questions. Students will play Name That Chapter in cooperative groups. Students will be inquirers while using a Webquest on the textual allusions Reading quizzes Collaborative group work: students will discuss the Continuum of Human Groups worksheet from Friendly to Hostile after watching The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. Students will then apply those terms to characters in the novel. International Mindedness: Discussions in class will often lead to conversations about prejudice in other cultures, countries etc. For instance we will talk about religious prejudice during the 1940s which was mentioned in the book. We will also talk about prejudice towards women in different cultures including our own as well as ageism. In some countries the very young or the very old are the special ones. All of these prejudices were brought up in the novel and through the film and poetry that we used. reading several poems about racism such as Incident by Countee Cullen as well as writing about the subject from influential historical figures. Differentiation: High level readers will join a blog with our Tag teacher answering high level general questions. Other Language A teachers will respond to the blog entries. Low level readers will be encouraged to read summaries on-line as well as listen to the book on tape. Study groups and study guides will need to be utilized with struggling readers. Students should become engaged with quickwrites and class discussions. analyzing the lyrics of Michael Jackson s Black and White video. Who was his audience? How did what he say influence others? Student Reflection: Self assessment before turning in scrapbook. Peer grade on scrapbook before they turn it in. During gallery walk, have students write positive comment sticky notes for three of their peers scrapbooks. Final reflection after scrapbook is returned. Now that students have feedback, how do they feel? What would they have changed? Do they understand the teacher s comments? Resources What resources are available to us? How will our classroom environment, local environment and/or the community be used to facilitate students experiences during

4 the unit? Mississippi Trial: possible other novel for lower readers To Kill a Mockingbird Literature from our textbook and our own selections. Black and White video and song lyrics Students also asked their family members for stories about discrimination and opened the communication lines up with people within their own family. Scottsboro Trial, 30s, and other literary allusions research The Sneetches video Ongoing reflections and evaluation In keeping an ongoing record, consider the following questions. There are further stimulus questions at the end of the Planning for teaching and learning section of MYP: From principles into practice. Students and teachers What did we find compelling? Were our disciplinary knowledge/skills challenged in any way? What inquiries arose during the learning? What, if any, extension activities arose? How did we reflect both on the unit and on our own learning? Which attributes of the learner profile were encouraged through this unit? What opportunities were there for student-initiated action? Possible connections How successful was the collaboration with other teachers within my subject group and from other subject groups? What interdisciplinary understandings were or could be forged through collaboration with other subjects? Assessment Were students able to demonstrate their learning? How did the assessment tasks allow students to demonstrate the learning objectives identified for this unit? How did I make sure students were invited to achieve at all levels of the criteria descriptors? Are we prepared for the next stage? Data collection How did we decide on the data to collect? Was it useful? Students really became interested in the variety of prejudices presented in the book. They really enjoyed Atticus s words of wisdoms and the discussions of quotes, which were placed on the board many times during the unit. It was clear, after reading the journals in the scrapbooks, that students truly understood how much Scout was influenced by a handful of characters in the book. They did a nice job incorporating textual examples in their writing which we were pleased about, since that s a stretch for some 8 th graders. Through journaling and discussions, particularly after the Sneetches video, students understood why people developed prejudices or stereotypes towards others. Students reflected on their performance on their scrapbook and also received peer responses on their work. Even though the scrapbook idea might seem to only appeal to girls, most boys did a great job too, even though some took a much simpler approach. We pushed all students to see how simply this could be done and still be

5 successful. We also encouraged them to look into on-line scrapbooking programs. The 8 th grade team met with the IB coordinator, tag coordinator, media specialist and special education teacher to plan this unit. We also connected many of our discussions to what was happening in the humanities classes who were learning about the 60s and the Civil Rights movement. Students were really excited about the assessment task. The objects and pictures they chose to represent their character were awesome and very creative. Students took their time to write great captions that really conveyed how the object matched the character. Journaling from Scout s perspective was detailed and included textual examples and lessons that the characters either said or shared through their actions. By showing exemplary scrapbooks from last year, students reached way higher than they had in the past. Samples of the scrapbook were saved as exemplars and student writing was graded and compared with other writing which contained textual examples earlier in the year. The rubric needs to be re-examined as there was no spot to grade the object category. Some students just chose random quotes rather than the quotes proving what they learned form the characters and there was no place to deduct that. Class time may need to be added depending on our clientele from year to year. Figure 12 MYP unit planner