UNIT 2 The BIG Question What Brings Out the Best in You? Friends laugh at your “silliest jokes, put up with your worst moves, go along with your craziest ideas, and always see the best in you. ” — Unknown 114 Taxi/Getty Images LOOKING AHEAD The skill lessons and readings in this unit will help you develop your own answer to the Big Question. UNIT 2 WARM-UP • Connecting to the Big Question GENRE FOCUS: Biography and Autobiography Madam C. J. Walker . 119 by Jim Haskins READING WORKSHOP 1 Skill Lesson: Activating Prior Knowledge The Jacket . 130 by Gary Soto The World Is Not a Pleasant Place to Be . 139 by Nikki Giovanni WRITING WORKSHOP PART 1 Autobiographical Narrative . 142 READING WORKSHOP 2 Skill Lesson: Connecting Satchel Paige . 150 by Bill Littlefield Song for a Surf-Rider . 161 by Sara Van Alstyne Allen READING WORKSHOP 3 Skill Lesson: Predicting Eleanor Roosevelt . 168 by William Jay Jacobs In Eleanor Roosevelt’s Time . 180 WRITING WORKSHOP PART 2 Autobiographical Narrative . 184 READING WORKSHOP 4 Skill Lesson: Questioning Gentleman of the Pool . 192 by Alice Park from TIME Primary Lessons . 198 by Judith Ortiz Cofer COMPARING LITERATURE WORKSHOP from The Pigman & Me . 211 by Paul Zindel The Goodness of Matt Kaizer . 221 by Avi UNIT 2 WRAP-UP • Answering the Big Question 115 UNIT 2 WARM-UP What Brings Out the Connecting to Best in You? Every day you have different kinds of experiences. How you respond to these experiences shows what type of person you are. Sometimes you might act bravely. Other times you might show kindness. Think about who or what has helped to bring out the best in you. Real Kids and the Big Question JORDAN is one of the smartest students at school. Jordan’s friend Guy asked Jordan to help him improve his reading skills. Because of Jordan’s help, Guy is more confident when he has to read aloud in class. Do you think helping his friend brings out the best in Jordan? Why or why not? BETTINA sings in a city choir. The choir is planning a trip to Mexico. Bettina’s parents told her that she would have to pay for the trip. Bettina has been walking dogs, cutting grass, and babysitting for almost a year to earn enough money. How can working to pay her own way bring out the best in Bettina? Warm-Up Activity As a class, discuss the things that you think bring out the best in people. Talk about how helping friends and neighbors can bring out the best in a person. Then tell the class about an experience that brought out your best. 116 UNIT 2 What Brings Out the Best in You? 116 (l)Taxi/Getty Images, (r)WireImageStock/Masterfile UNIT 2 WARM-UP You and the Big Question Reading about experiences that brought out the best in others can help you recognize what might bring out the best in you. Big Question Link to Web resources to further explore the Plan for the Unit Challenge Big Question at www.glencoe.com. At the end of the unit, you’ll use notes from all your reading to complete the Unit Challenge, which will explore your answer to the Big Question. You will choose one of the following activities: A. Magazine Article Work with a group to write an article telling others how they can bring out the best in themselves. B. Your Interview Prepare for an interview by answering a list of questions. • Start thinking about which activity you’d like to do so that you can narrow your focus as you read each selection. • In your Learner’s Notebook, write your thoughts about the activity you’d like to do. • Each time you make notes about the Big Question, think about how your ideas will help you with the Unit Challenge activity you chose. As you read, you’ll make notes about the Big Question. Later, you’ll use these notes to complete the Unit Challenge. See pages R8–R9 for help with making each Unit 2 Foldable. This diagram shows how each should look. 1. Make one Foldable for each workshop. 4. Open the flaps. At the very top of each Keep all of your Foldables for the unit in flap, write My Purpose for Reading. your Foldables folder. Below each crease, write The Big 2. On the bottom fold of your Foldable, write Question. the workshop number and the Big Question. 3. Write the titles of the selections in the workshop on the front of the flaps— one title on each flap. (See page 115 for the titles.) Warm-Up 117 UNIT 2 GENRE FOCUS: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY A biography is the story of a person’s life, written by another person. Biographies tell about real people, real times, and real events. Reading biographies is a great way to find out what brought out the best in a real person. An autobiography is a biography in which the author tells his or Skillss Focus her own story. • Keyy skills for reading biogra- phhyh and autobiography Why Read Biography and Autobiography? • KeyK literary elements of biog- raphy and autobiography Reading about the lives of real people can be interesting. You’ll learn about • people from other cultures and other times in history SkillsS Model • what happened to bring out the best in other people You will see how to use the key reading skills and ele- How to Read Biography and Autobiography ments as you read • Madam C. J. Walker, Key Reading Skills p. 119 These key reading skills are especially useful tools for reading and under- standing biography and autobiography. You’ll see these skills modeled in the Active Reading Model on pages 119–125, and you’ll learn more about them later in this unit. ■ Activating prior knowledge As you read, use what you know to help you understand the subject, the story, the main character, or the setting. (See Reading Workshop 1.) ■ Connecting Link what you are reading to your own experiences. (See Reading Workshop 2.) ■ Predicting Based on what you know and have read, guess what will happen next in the selection. (See Reading Workshop 3.) ■ Questioning Check your understanding as you read by asking yourself questions about the text. (See Reading Workshop 4.) Key Literary Elements Objectives (pp. 118–125) Recognizing and thinking about the following literary elements will help you Reading Activate prior knowledge understand a text more fully. • Make connections from text to ■ self • Make predictions • Ask Narrator: the voice telling the story (See “The Jacket.”) questions ■ Point of view: the person through whose eyes you see the story Literature Identify literary ele- (See “Satchel Paige.”) ments: narrator, point of view, chronological order, tone ■ Chronological order: the order in which events in a story happen (See “Eleanor Roosevelt.”) ■ Tone: the attitude of the author (See “Gentleman of the Pool.”) 118 UNIT 2 What Brings Out the Best in You? UNIT 2 GENRE FOCUS The notes in the side columns model how to use the skills and elements you read about on page 118. Biography ACTIVE READING MODEL 1 Key Reading Skill Connecting I would like to earn a million dollars! by Jim Haskins I wonder how Madam C. J. Walker did it! M adam C. J. Walker was the fi rst American woman to earn a million dollars. There were American women millionaires before her time, but they had inherited their wealth, either from their husbands or from their families. Madam Walker was the fi rst woman to earn her fortune by setting up her own business and proving that women could be fi nancially independent of men. The company she started in the early years of this century is still in operation today. 1 This photo of Madam Walker was taken around 1914. It was widely used in Walker Company advertisements. This portrait was also used on a 1998 commemorative postage stamp. Madam C. J. Walker 119 A.Lelia Bundles/Walker Family Collection UNIT 2 GENRE FOCUS ACTIVE READING MODEL Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867. She grew up in the South under very racist conditions. Her parents, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, had been slaves until President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the Civil War had freed the slaves. After the war, few provisions1 were made to help former slaves become independent. They did not receive money to help them get started in their new lives. They were uneducated, they had few skills except the ability to grow crops, and many were unaware of what freedom meant. Like the majority of former slaves, the Breedloves remained on the Burney family plantation in Delta, Louisiana. They had little choice but to stay on the same land where they had been slaves, only now they were sharecroppers. 2 2 Key Reading Skill The Breedloves sharecropped cotton. Like her brothers Questioning What are and sisters, Sarah was working in the cotton fi elds by the sharecroppers? I better look up the meaning of the word in time she was six. By the time she was eleven, both her a dictionary, in case it appears parents were dead, and she moved in with her older later in the text. sister, Louvenia. A few years later, they moved across the river to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Sarah married a man named McWilliams to get away from her sister’s household. At that time, conditions in the South for blacks were actually worse than they had been during slavery. This was the time when Jim Crow laws were passed, segregating2 southern blacks from whites in nearly every area of life.