My Life As an Undocumented Immigrant
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Immigration: An Ethical Dilemma A 9th Grade Model Unit - Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment Driven by the ELA Common Core State Standards Published by Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Suite 400 Chicago, IL 60654 Copyright ©2014 by Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center All Rights Reserved. This book may be reproduced and shared for educational purposes only with credit given to the Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center and the American Federation of Teachers Innovation Fund. Printed in the United States of America Editing and Design: Michael P. Moriarty www.sharemylesson.com/ctu Chicago Teachers Union Officers Karen GJ Lewis, NBCT President Jesse Sharkey Vice President Michael E. Brunson Recording Secretary Kristine Mayle Financial Secretary Quest Center Staff Lynn Cherkasky-Davis, Director of Professional Learning Michael P. Moriarty, NBCT, Special Projects Facilitator - CCSS Carol Caref, NBCT, Director of Research Jennifer Johnson, Special Projects Facilitator - Teacher Evaluation Walter Taylor, NBCT, Professional Development Facilitator Sarah Hainds, Researcher Pavlyn Jankov, Researcher Deborah Pazera, Support Staff Trisha Raymond, Support Staff Jackson Potter, Staff Coordinator “Designing Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Common Core Standards – Prototype Teaching Units” is a project supported by the American Federation of Teachers Innovation Fund. Published by the Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center. Produced by 45 Chicago Public School teachers. www.sharemylesson.com/ctu Immigration: An Ethical Dilemma Table of Contents The Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center model instructional unit, “Immigration: An Ethical Dilemma,” is designed specifically for the ease of use by a classroom teacher. This document can be printed for teacher and student copies of all assignments and activities. The electronic version is embedded with links for a teacher to quickly locate and access the desired lesson and resource. This complete unit can be found exclusively at www.sharemylesson.com/ctu. The field test video displaying samples for the unit can be viewed at the CTU Quest Center You Tube Channel or directly at http://youtu.be/Z862K81lSO8 Contents Foreword by Timothy Shanahan........................................................................................2 Contributors......................................................................................................................5 Unit Overview...................................................................................................................6 Lesson 1: Introduction to Immigration...............................................................................11 “A Nation Built For Immigrants” Immigration Map Immigration Tracking Organizer Lesson 2: Annotation as a Skill...........................................................................................40 “Immigrants in Our Own Land” by Jimmy Santiago Baca “Mexicans Begin Jogging” by Gary Soto “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes “Salvador Late or Early” by Sandra Cisneros “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus “What Annotation Looks Like” Lesson 3: My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.............................................................63 “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” by Jose Antonio Vargas (abridged) Graphic organizer Lesson 4: Paranoia: Close Reading of a Short Story.............................................................88 “Paranoia” by Said Sayrafiezadeh Lesson 5: Culminating Task: Immigration on Trial..............................................................125 Jury note sheet Jury verdict assignment/rubric Participant assignment/rubric Endangered: A Study about Animal Population Change 4th Grade www.sharemylesson.com/ctu Table of Contents - 1 1 Foreword English Language Arts Timothy Shanahan Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Education University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago is the third largest urban district in the United States, and it has an incredibly diverse and much challenged population of students. Large percentages of Chicago kids are growing up in poverty and many hear little English at home. That means, Chicago students have been less likely to meet past educational standards—and if these new standards are so much higher, that could mean even fewer Chicago Public School students would succeed. That’s a logical conclusion, but not necessarily a correct one. Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, used to tell the possibly apocryphal story about New York City schools raising graduation requirements, and, consequently, increasing graduation rates. True or not, it makes sense that higher goals could lead teachers and student to up their games, which could result in better outcomes. But such outcomes will never be attained just throwing our educational hats over higher fences. We are going to have to climb those fences. That’s where the Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center comes in. Who can best prepare and lead what is sure to be a daunting and dizzying climb? The Quest Center’s answer was: teachers. Teachers could, working in concert, take on the demands of these new goals. They could learn the nuances of the new requirements and they could translate those hard won insights into instructional units that would support learning in inner city classrooms. The idea never was to develop an entire English Language Arts curriculum for the Chicago Public Schools, but to create a collection of exemplary instructional units aimed at casting a light for other teachers to follow. All three units are groups of plans that include a culminating task, resources, EL adaptations, assessments, instructional choices and suggestions, learning progressions, videos, an examination of how each lesson addresses the CCSS, anticipated student/teacher responses, and activities for classroom use. As is usually the case in the best curriculum development projects, there are two outcomes vying for pre-eminence. On the one hand, this project created a wonderful set of instructional plans ready for use in classrooms across the city (and country). On the other, the teachers who wrote these lessons by engaging in the Quest Center processes, extended and deepened their understanding of the new standards and of what it will take to reach them. The units will be valuable, of course, but my bet is on the teachers who created them; they are now among the most knowledgeable teachers in the system when it comes to these new standards. www.sharemylesson.com/ctu Foreword - 1 2 Foreword English Language Arts I was fortunate to play a small role in this action. I provided some professional development for the teachers who took part (which made sense given that I helped author the CCSS standards and had extensive experience in Chicago schools), and I had the opportunity to provide feedback along the way, as the teacher writing teams created their lessons. The CCSS changes are so extensive that the drafts often missed the mark—remember these teachers were trying to master the nuances of the standards while designing lessons to reach them. My straightforward criticism must have been dispiriting at times. But, of course, that is one of the great benefits of teachers working collectively; when someone gets discouraged, there are others to cheer them on—when one teacher isn’t sure what to do next, another one fills the gap because he/she has managed to figure it out. The higher CCSS goals will compel many changes in Chicago classrooms and, I suspect, many others across the country as well: (1) teachers are to assign more difficult or challenging texts in Grades 2-12; (2) students are to spend more time reading informational, as opposed to literary, texts than in the past; (3) students are to become close readers, capable of identifying what texts say while analyzing craft and structure and connecting the text with other texts—multiple text reading is a big thing in Common Core; (4) teachers are to teach the specialized reading and writing skills of history, social studies, science, literature, and technical subjects; and (5) students are to write less about themselves and their personal experiences and to engage more in public writing about what they read (summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing information from texts). The participating teachers developed three instructional units driven by the English Language Arts (ELA) standards. Although the lessons are assigned to three grade levels (Grades 1, 4, 9), don’t take these designations too literally; the lessons could, with some minor adjustment, be easily adapted to the needs of other grade levels and in other teaching contexts. For instance, teachers could use the Grade 4 unit with third- or fifth-graders. This is important given the diversity of Chicago schools. Although the lessons are aimed at the ELA standards, they also each have a pronounced content focus so the units are interdisciplinary; that is one of the changes being encouraged by the new standards. Through these lessons, students will develop their language and literacy skills, but they will also gain purchase on a deep knowledge of what they are reading, speaking, and writing about. Specifically, the grade 1 unit introduces the ideas of species and involves students in exploring frogs and toads; the grade 4 unit emphasizes ecology and endangered species; and, the grade 9 unit engages students in the study of immigration. These lessons go further than just exposing students to information on these