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In this section you will find the following:
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Recollection--A Journey Back
Life is a journey that starts at birth. As we travel on the road of life, we make many discoveries that change the way we see our world and we meet many people who influence us. Our youth can be challenging but can also be, in retrospect, "the best time of one’s life".
Our youth was a time of innocence and experience, laughter and tears, security and uncertainty. As we look back at the children we were and those we knew, we get a sense of our roots and have an opportunity to understand who we have become, as well as who we would like to be.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
-William Wordsworth
Sub-themes: Innocence and Experience, Wonder and Imagination, Family and Peer Relationships, School and Education, Triumphs and Defeats.
This sample unit introduces students to the theme of recollections using prose (short stories, essays, and novels) and poetry reflecting memories of family, school, and childhood. It encourages students to look back at their own experiences as they read, listen, view, speak, and write about them. In addition to a number of guided reading, listening, and viewing activities, students will have opportunities to participate in discussion groups, panel presentations, and oral readings, and to write short pieces about childhood memories and insights as well as a reflective essay. The unit concludes with a novel study and a play which encourage students to extend their experiences and insights as they anticipate the journey of life that lies ahead of them. An outline of the unit follows.
Introduction
Recollections of Childhood
Recollections of Home and Family
Wonder and Imagination in Childhood
Recollections of School
Innocence and Experience
Putting Our Memories and Experiences into Perspective
Looking Back and Looking Forward
The suggested time frame for this unit is ten weeks (50 hours). This is a suggested time only. Teachers may have to adjust it based on their students’ needs, interests, and learning paces.
Throughout this unit, the following symbols are used to refer to the Common Essential Learnings (C.E.L.s):
| Communication | |
| Critical and Creative Thinking | |
| Independent Learning | |
| Personal and Social Values and Skills | |
| Technological Literacy | |
| Numeracy |
The Common Essential Learning of Communication is a basis for most activities in an English language arts course. Emphasis on particular C.E.L.s in this sample unit does not preclude the development of other Common Essential Learnings.
The following objectives were selected for this sample unit. Foundational objectives are identified by the symbol FO.
Speaking
Students will:
Listening
Students will:
Writing
Students will:
Reading
Students will:
The English language arts curriculum is designed to help students widen their knowledge and appreciation of the English language. The "nature of language" is best learned contextually. Understanding should grow from students’ language production and should not be expected to develop through isolated drills and exercises pulled out of context (e.g., workbooks). During the course of this unit and the subsequent unit, students should be actively engaged in using language for their communication purposes. In addition, they should increase their understanding of three broad language concepts:
As students are engaged in the language processes, teachers are encouraged to diagnose their strengths and needs as they work with the elements of language. A checklist such as the following might be used to keep a record of the students’ understanding and needs.
Text
__ Effective communication considers audience and purpose.
__ Different purposes require different modes of discourse.
__ Paragraphs and essays have conventions.
__ Effective conventions are unified, coherent, and emphatic.
__ Other:
Sentences
__ Written sentences are complete and clear.
__ Sentences can be expanded, compounded, and subordinated.
__ Effective written sentences use precise words.
__ Sentence style is enhanced by balance, parallelism, and inversion.
__ Other:
Words
__ An appropriate word suits the time, place, and audience.
__ Words have emotional appeal.
__ Word use should be economical.
__ Wide vocabularies help people express ideas.
__ Written vocabularies differ from oral vocabularies.
__ Word use is influenced by age and geography.
__ Other:
Sound
__ Several production factors are important in oral communication--articulation, pronunciation, tempo, tone, volume, emphasis, and pitch.
__ Language has sound patterns including alliteration, repetition, rhythm, and rhyme.
__ Other:
Mini-lessons
Some students may require more assistance than others with specific language concepts and processes. Take the time to model the speaking, listening, writing, reading, representing, and viewing processes and, if necessary, to provide mini-lessons before, during, or after students engage in these processes. A mini-lesson is a focused lesson designed to help students learn how to do something (e.g., achieve unity and coherence in their writing) or to address a language concept needed for a task (e.g., achieve precision in word choice). These lessons can be taught to the whole class, to a small group, or to an individual.
A series of mini-lessons on unity and coherence might include:
The introduction captures the listener’s or reader’s attention and presents the main idea of the presentation. The attention grabber may be one of the following:
The body of the presentation usually includes several paragraphs that support the thesis statement. Generally, each paragraph has a topic sentence that expresses one main idea related to the thesis and the rest of the sentences elaborate on that main idea.
The conclusion gives the listener or viewer the sense that the presentation is complete. A conclusion might:
In a unified paragraph, each sentence is related to the main idea of the paragraph and each paragraph is related to the main idea of the whole presentation.
Coherence is achieved by ensuring that each sentence in a paragraph follows logically from the one that precedes it and that each paragraph follows logically from the one before. Coherence is achieved by:
Assessment and Evaluation
Assessment and evaluation must be closely tied to the learning objectives and processes of the curriculum. A Sample Assessment and Evaluation Summary form is included in this unit to help teachers plan assessment and unit-end evaluation.
Although specific language resources and literary selections are identified for particular activities, alternative resources and activities can be used to achieve the unit objectives. English Language Arts 20: A Bibliography lists a range of resources that can be used to achieve the objectives of this curriculum. Some resources chosen for this sample unit include:
Nonfiction
Before We Begin (McLean)
Back to Wolf Willow (Stegner)
Voices of the Grandmothers (Welsh)
Beyond My Father’s Shadow (Chambers)
Remember, Mum, When I Mocked You? (Manji)
How to Do Battle with Grown-Ups (Collier)
Childhood Through the Ages (McCoy)
Two Kinds (Tan)
For Reading Out Loud! (Kimmel and Segal)
Who’s Afraid of the Wicked Witch? (Gibson)
The Credo (Fulghum)
Nursery Crimes (Evans)
The Catastrophe of Success (Williams)
Short Stories
Penny in the Dust (Buckler)
To Everything There is a Season (MacLeod)
Grace (Sears)
A Visit to Grandmother (Kelley)
School, the First Day (Sapergia)
The Metaphor (Wilson)
Skipper (Nowlan)
Charlie (Maracle)
Charles (Jackson)
Novels
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
The Joy Luck Club (Tan)
Keeper ‘n Me (Wagamese)
Hey, Monias (Dickson)
Shizuko’s Daughter (Mori)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Cold Sassy Tree (Burns)
Poetry
My Home Town (Springsteen)
Home Street (Hyland)
(I Remember) Back Home (Joseph)
The Piano (Davey)
Warren Pryor (Nowlan)
Credo (Fulghum)
Students (Wayman)
The Centaur (Swenson)
Fern Hill (Thomas)
Luka (Vega)
The Child Who Walks Backwards (Crozier)
Plays
The Glass Menagerie (Williams)
Other Resources
Newspaper clippings, radio and television advertisements, posters, language handbooks, dictionaries, and thesauri are also useful in this unit.
For printing and copying this template Require Acrobat Reader
Sample Assessment and Evaluation Summary
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Student’s Name: ______________________________________ Class: _______________________________________________ Teacher: _____________________________________________ Unit: Recollections--A Journey Back_________________________ |
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Date |
Diagnostic |
Assessment (Process) |
P |
A |
G |
E |
Assessment (Product) |
Mark |
Weight
| Speaking/Representing
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