THEMATIC UNIT

Title and Subject Area: Literary Terms & story analysis

Name: Amy Peabody Grade Level: 6-8th Timeline/Length: 3 weeks

Unit Rationale: The main idea of this unit is to see how well students can use the literary terms that they have been taught and apply them to other aspects of their reading analysis. Literary devices and literary terms are very important to understand and they need to be developed for ESL learners because then certain aspects of literature will make sense. We will build critical thinking skills throughout this unit. Differentiating between fact and fiction is also something that will be covered in this unit which is crucial to language learners; this will help students learn about what they can relate to in life and what help them understand things that are more than likely to not happen. Objectives: a. Students will be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. b. Students will be able to identify different literary terms. c. Students will be able to analyze a story. d. Students will be able to chronologically order events in a story. Goal Areas / Standards Addressed: o Goal 1.3: Presentational- Information, Concepts, ideas to an audience of listeners or readers o Goal 2: Perspectives- Meanings, Attitudes, Values, Ideas. o Goal 3.1: Knowledge- Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language o Goal 4.2: Cultural Comparisons- Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own o Standard 2: English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of LANGUAGE ARTS (WIDA Standards) Level 3: Identify main ideas and supporting details Level 3: Identify use of literary devices related to different time frames in visually supported discourse Instructional Procedures: o Organizing events in chronological order as they happened in the story. (Interpretative Communication) o Correctly fill out a graphic organizer with examples of literary terms. (Presentational Communication) o Differentiate between fact and fiction. (Interpretative Communication) Assessment Procedures: o The correctness of the graphic organizer for the book, Hatchet will assess how well the students knew the literary terms, there will be a test given at the end of the unit and a question will ask for the students to provide an example of three literary terms. o The consistent review of the literary terms will be an oral assessment once the display is taken down in the classroom but the students will still be asked to define the literary term.

 Materials: The book Hatchet, enough copies for each student to have a copy; graphic organizer chart display, scissors, glue,

Lesson 1: Identifying Literary Terms

Objectives: Students will be able to identify different literary terms. We will start a class discussion with what students think makes up a good story; the hope is to get answers such as: characters, main ideas and other literary terms. Depending on how the discussion goes we may have to start simpler. Everything that we read as a class has a purpose, and the idea is to have the students explain what is important and why it is related to the topic in class. The goal is to make a list of literary terms that are important on the board and then as a class we will come up with a definition for each term. Character: a person who is responsible for the thoughts and actions within a story, poem, or other literature (Henderson, Victoria) Setting: the time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a situation occurs. Settings include the background, atmosphere or environment in which characters live and move, and usually include physical characteristics of the surroundings (Endriga, Kate) Plot: The structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction (Literary Terms and Definitions) Conflict: The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on (Literary Terms and Definitions) Climax: The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. (Literary Terms and Definitions) Theme: a common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work (Severson, Susan) The students will help construct definitions like these and we will make a display for the classroom that will look as follows:
Literary Term Character Setting Plot Conflict Climax Theme Definition & Example

This chart will be reviewed several times and every time we read something new the students will be able to give definitions and examples of each of these terms.

Lesson 2: Fact or Fiction

Objective: Students will be able to distinguish between fact and fiction Materials: Scissors, glue, construction paper, and the worksheets providing the pieces to make the spiders (attached)

While discussing literary terms, we discussed the differences between fact and fiction, or fiction and non-fiction as some like to say. The point of this was to make the students aware that not everything they read is true all of the time. We will come up of a list of synonyms of what is fiction and what is non-fiction and it will be displayed in the classroom.

Procedure: For our activity, we will make a spider; there will be eight legs four of which contain true factual statements and four of which are fiction statements. These facts will come from their sustained silent reading books which are at a simple level because the students read them at home and during free time at school. Students will be given their worksheets and materials. One worksheet will include eight boxes; the boxes represent the legs of the spider. o This is where their fact and fiction statements will be written. The students will make up the statements themselves about things that were both factual and fictional from the stories they have read. Once the statements are all written they will then be cut out After all the pieces are cut out, students will glue them to the body of the spider; one half of the body is labeled Fact and the other side is labeled Fiction. The students will glue their statements to the correct classification of whether the statement is factual or fictional.

Assessment: Based off the statements that the students have written I will be able to know if they can distinguish between the things that we read that are real and the things that are fake. There will not be a grade on this assignment but it will affect the students classroom participation.

Fact

Fiction

Lesson 3: Organizing The Hatchet Objectives: Students will be able to analyze a story. Students will be able to chronologically order events in a story. Procedure: 1. As a class, we will read a story, Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen aloud in class. This will take place in a two week time period because we will only be reading the story in class and not at home It is important that the students realize the details of the story so we will stop periodically to discuss what is occurring and at times make predictions as to what may happen next in the book. 2. Once completing the story the students will be able to make a graphic organizer of the story which will look like the following:

Characters

theme

plot

conflict

setting

The completion of this chart/organizer will be one way to assess how well the students are able to analyze the story with the literary terms that we have learned.

3. Students will also make a cycle chart where they will order events of the story. The students will have to pick our five things that they can express in detail, and they will have to chronologically order the events into the cycle starting with the beginning of the

story. The cycle chart will provide the students recollection of the order in which events in the story occurred. 4. The students will present their charts to the people sitting at their tables. 5. The students will compare and contrast their charts and discuss any similarities and differences. Assessment: As the teacher, I will know if the students have analyzed the literary terms correctly based off the correctness of their charts. If there seems to be many differences when the students discuss their graphs then there may be some confusion in what the term means or if the students cannot give a proper example.

6. 4. Works Cited Endriga, Henderson, & Severson (students.) All American: Glossary of Literary Terms. University of North Carolina at Pembroke. http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm#r Literary Terms and Definitions. 10 September 2012. http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_C.html