ABC Two Week Lesson Plan
(Coming soon)
Teaching with a Linked Text Set
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Introduction
As I continue to move further along in my internships and acquire more experience teaching, I have been able to be a part of two separate classrooms and learning environments. While both places have had their differences when compared to each other, one thing that remains the same is the importance placed on student engagement. Student engagement is everything; if the students are not involved and interested, your job as a teacher becomes considerably more difficult. Domain 3 of the Arkansas Teacher Excellence and Support System (TESS) emphasizes the importance of “engaging students in learning.” It is important to engage your students throughout your lesson, and a great way to do that is through activities, assignments, materials, and resources. One way I have been able to implement Domain 3 in my teaching is by using a linked text set.
During my internship at Springdale High School, I created a two-week unit plan and incorporated a linked text set. Instead of reading one single text during a unit, a linked text set allows students to read and analyze multiple texts from across different mediums. Linked text sets greatly influence student engagement by allowing teachers to bring in many resources that are relevant to the students in their classroom. Teachers are able to use different mediums to support how their students learn best, and students are able to retain the theme by interpreting how several different authors view the same topic. Seeing different perspectives also helps students understand how a theme or topic can exist outside the classroom. By incorporating a linked text set into my unit plan, I am aiming for my students not only to see how themes speak across multiple texts, but how they can also connect to the world around them.
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My Unit
For my unit, I will be focusing on the following standards: RL.9-10.2: “Examine a grade-appropriate literary text. Provide an objective summary. Determine a theme of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details” and RL.9-10.3: “Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme”. At the end of this unit, my goal is to have my students not only meet those standards, but also have a deeper understanding and connection to our theme. I chose a specific theme for us to examine, with the hopes that a majority of my students could connect to it personally. For this unit, we will study the concept of multiculturalism. With so many diverse backgrounds in my classroom, I want my students to understand that multiculturalism should be seen as an asset and something to be celebrated, and that when people assimilate to a certain standard, society loses the richness of cultural diversity. For them to begin to understand this, I must first ask them the essential question, “What is multiculturalism?” Only after they understand what it is will they be able to discuss the question, “How is multiculturalism an asset and strength?” I also want students to look at debates surrounding multiculturalism and ask questions like, “What is assimilation?”, “Is it necessary to assimilate?”, and “Why do we try to fit in?” My students will be able to answer these questions at the end of the unit, and I have picked specific print and non-print texts for my linked set to assist their forming opinions and gaining information. I have selected two print texts and two non-print texts that will be engaging for my students, and which will draw in their interest and involvement. While reading these texts, my students will follow the lives of characters that strengthen the theme of multiculturalism, as the standards require. The intricate details of each text allow the theme to grow and become clearer as the students analyze and reflect upon them.
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American Born Chinese
The first text I chose is the primary text my students and I will be spending the most time with during the course of the unit I’m teaching. American Born Chinese is a graphic novel written and drawn by Gene Yang. Multiculturalism is a major theme in this text, and each one of the three main characters helps develop this theme throughout the story. This text will allow my students to examine the multiculturalism versus assimilation debate through the lens of a graphic novel. The detailed pictures and colorful pages make it an enjoyable read for students, with wit and humor that engages the reader and captures their attention. On a more serious level, the story shows students who are trying to fit in at school. They want to be accepted, and they think they need to change themselves to do that. Throughout my internship, I have had conversations with individual students who feel the same way these characters do. A lot of my students have said they want to blend in at school, and not be different or an outcast. I believe this relatability will pique their interest in this text, and they will be engaged as they follow the characters in the novel. In the end I am hoping they will see how the characters can be themselves and connect to others despite their differences and make a text to self-connection.
Poems by Francis Duggan
My second text is a short collection of print texts. They are poems by Francis Duggan, titled “A Multicultural Town”, “The Multicultural Town”, and “Multicultural Day”. All of these poems are concerned with describing what multiculturalism looks like in society, and they provide examples of people peacefully living together with different values and beliefs. I believe these poems are a great way for my students to obtain a better understanding of multiculturalism and what it looks like. These are also low risk poems to read, so they could be read in groups in order to create engagement and have students discussing the essential questions. Reading and analyzing these poems will allow my students to look at ideas and alternate perspectives in order to grasp the understandings I want them to acquire. Starting a class with these poems will allow students to enter the right headspace and continue to reflect on what multiculturalism is.
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“It’s (Past) Time to Appreciate Cultural Diversity"
Another non-print text I will be linking to this unit is “It’s (Past) Time to Appreciate Cultural Diversity”, a TEDtalk given by Hayley Yeates. In this talk, Yeates discusses how she grew up with many assumptions and stereotypes around her. She felt like she needed to work harder than everyone else to fit in and be a part of the group. She has a desire for cultural diversity, where people do not have to choose which part of them they want to be, but instead can be every part of themselves fully. This video can connect to how some characters in American Born Chinese feel, and will be beneficial for my students to help make real world connections. Instead of a character on a page, they are looking at a real person who struggles with fitting in in our very own society. Asking them to see the similarities between these two texts will give them the opportunity to see what people can lose in diversity when they assimilate or conform, and also how these issues are relevant in our daily lives. I also chose to find a video for my students to watch in order to offer them another medium to examine. My students consistently show interest in videos or technology, so incorporating that into the unit plan will peak their interests and keep them engaged.
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“What Makes a School Multicultural?”
As my final print linked text, I will have my students look at the article “What Makes a School Multicultural?” by Caleb Rosado. Rosado talks about how schools being multicultural requires more than just having a diverse population. He gives tips on how to properly implement multicultural practices and emphasizes their importance. At the end of this unit, students will be working in groups to create a documentary about multiculturalism in their school. They will have seen the theme of multiculturalism developed in American Born Chinese by this point and will be asked to apply that concept to their own lives. The characters in the graphic novel make the theme stronger, and I want my students to document how their school’s multicultural student body strengthens the school’s culture. They attend a school that is rich in diversity, and my hope is that they will understand this as an asset by the end of the unit.
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Conclusion
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With the help of this linked text set, my students will meet the required standards of understanding themes in stories and connecting character development to a theme. The use of my main non-print text, American Born Chinese, and the supplemental print and non-print texts will assist students in making text to self-connections and connecting them to the theme of multiculturalism. My goal for this unit is for students to see multiculturalism as a strength and understand that the different cultures we find in a given class should always be celebrated.
