Analyze Point of View: Team Moon | EL Education Curriculum

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Focus Standards: These are the standards the instruction addresses.

  • RI.6.1, RI.6.4, RI.6.6, RI.6.8, L.6.4, L.6.5

Supporting Standards: These are the standards that are incidental—no direct instruction in this lesson, but practice of these standards occurs as a result of addressing the focus standards.

  • RI.6.10, W.6.10, SL.6.1

Daily Learning Targets

  • I can analyze the author's point of view and purpose and how they are conveyed in the Team Moon text. (RI.6.6, L.6.5)
  • I can determine an author's claim made in an excerpt of Team Moon. (RI.6.8)

Ongoing Assessment

  • Work Time A: Team Moon annotations (RI.6.1, RI.6.6, RI.6.10)
  • Work Time B: Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 note-catcher (RI.6.1, RI.6.4, RI.6.6, L.6.4, L.6.5)
  • Closing and Assessment A: Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 (RI.6.1, RI.6.6, RI.6.8)

Agenda

AgendaTeaching Notes

1. Opening

A. Engage the Learner (5 minutes)

2. Work Time

A. Read Team Moon Excerpt - RI.6.6 (15 minutes)

B. Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 - RI.6.6, L.6.5 (15 minutes)

3. Closing and Assessment

A. Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 - RI.6.6, RI.6.8 (10 minutes)

4. Homework

A. Complete Space Race Events Timeline: Students look up dates and details of one or two other Apollo missions and add them to their Homework: Space Race Events Timeline.

Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

  • RI.6.1 – Work Time A: Students participate in a collaborative Annotating Text protocol with the Team Moon text, identifying textual evidence that supports their analysis of the text.
  • RI.6.6 – Work Time A: During the Annotating Text protocol, students annotate Team Moon to determine the author’s point of view.
  • RI.6.1 – Work Time B: Students participate in a Language Dive using a sentence from Team Moon. They use textual evidence to answer questions about the sentence and the text.
  • RI.6.4 – Work Time B: During the Language Dive, students determine the connotative meanings of words as they are used in the text.
  • RI.6.6 – Work Time B: During the Language Dive, students analyze how words with specific connotations can convey the author’s point of view toward the Apollo 11 mission in Team Moon.
  • L.6.4 – Work Time B: During the Language Dive, students use vocabulary strategies to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words in Team Moon.
  • L.6.5 – Work Time B: During the Language Dive, students differentiate among words with similar denotations but distinct connotations.
  • RI.6.6 – Closing and Assessment A: Students complete an exit ticket in which they read a quote by astronaut Michael Collins and determine his point of view toward the political leaders of the world.
  • RI.6.8 – Closing and Assessment A: As part of the exit ticket, students identify a claim that Collins is making in his quote.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

  • Point out astronaut Michael Collins’s use of parallelism, similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure, in the quote from the exit ticket (“blue and white,” “capitalist or Communist,” “rich or poor,” and “envious or envied”). Ask students to discuss how the use of parallelism enhances the sentence. Challenge students to identify other techniques the author employs, such as alliteration.
  • During Work Time A, students read Text: Team Moon Excerpt and learn more about the events leading up to the Apollo 11 moon landing. Invite students who are especially interested in space travel to explore the official Apollo 11 flight journal, which has transcripts and audio to show the communications between the flight crew and the Mission Control Center (http://eled.org/0251).
  • Before distributing the Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 Sentence Chunk Chart in Work Time B, challenge students to select sentences from the text that they believe are worthy of a closer look through a Language Dive. Tell them that the purpose of this Language Dive is to help them better understand the way in which the author uses vocabulary to convey her point of view. In pairs, students can select an appropriate sentence and develop a series of two or three questions related to point of view in that sentence. Students can then compare their chosen sentence and questions to those of the Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 Sentence Chunk Chart. This task will exercise students’ understanding of an author’s point of view and how it is conveyed in a text, as well as increase students’ ownership of Language Dives.

How It Builds on Previous Work

  • In previous lessons, students have been building background knowledge about the Space Race. First, students read about the context in which the Space Race began, noting its goals and political undertones. Then, students read more about the particular astronauts involved in Apollo 11, which led to the first human being sent to the moon. This lesson adds to students’ understanding of the timeline by featuring a text that describes the final events before the Apollo 11 launch. Students engage with the text using a variation of the Annotating Text protocol, first used in a previous lesson. This lesson also continues to develop students’ abilities to identify the ways an author uses words with specific connotations to express her point of view.

Support All Students

  • Note that there is a differentiated version of Text: Team Moon Excerpt used in Work Time A in the separate Teacher’s Guide for English Language Learners. ▲
  • This lesson features a collaborative version of the Annotating Text protocol, in which multiple students work together to annotate the same text. The collaboration built into this iteration of the protocol gives learners the opportunity to borrow from and build upon the thinking of others. Both peers and instructors can provide feedback to call attention to additional key ideas and details.
  • Students may notice during Closing and Assessment A that the last sentence in the quote from Michael Collins sounds repetitive. Remind students that, in the previous module, they focused on writing sentences with a variety of structures and vocabulary. Point out that although this sentence uses a lot of repetition, it does so deliberately and effectively.

Assessment Guidance

  • For homework in the previous lesson, students read about several Apollo missions and continued filling in a timeline to track the background knowledge they are building about the Space Race. During Opening A of this lesson, review the additions students made for homework in the previous lesson, but do not collect the timeline, as students will add to it for homework after this lesson.
  • Remind students that Unit 1 of this module is focused on building background knowledge about the Space Race to set the context for the anchor text, Hidden Figures. The many informational texts they read in this unit are intended to highlight the remarkable achievements of this time period and to make clear the people and perspectives that have been left out of these traditional narratives of events.
  • Students may not, at first, understand the structure of Text: Team Moon Excerpt. Explain that the subheadings separate the three main chunks of the text, each focused on a different aspect of the preparation for the Apollo 11 mission. Students may prefer to add annotations in different colors, one color for each section of the text, to highlight the changing focus of each section and distinguish different sets of notes.
  • As students determine the author’s purpose and point of view in Text: Team Moon Excerpt, push them to identify the words and phrases that convey both, as well as their connotations.

Down the Road

  • In the next lesson, students will complete the mid-unit assessment. The mid-unit assessment features a text that describes the culmination of the Space Race: the successful Apollo 11 mission and human beings’ first steps on the moon. The selected and constructed responses on the mid-unit assessment will feature selected response questions about central idea, vocabulary in context, and the author’s point of view and how it’s conveyed in the text.

In Advance

  • Preread Text: Team Moon Excerpt to identify potentially challenging technical vocabulary.
  • Review the Annotating Text protocol for use during Work Time A (see the EL Classroom Protocols located on the Tools Page. Note that this lesson will feature a collaborative version of the Annotating Text protocol.
  • Strategically arrange students into triads for the collaborative iteration of the Annotating Text protocol in Work Time A.
  • Prepare one piece of chart paper for each triad to use during the Annotating Text protocol. Text: Team Moon Excerpt should be printed and taped or glued to the center of the chart paper (stacked vertically). The remaining space on the chart paper will serve as the margins in which students will add their annotations.
  • Review the new materials used in this lesson to ensure clarity about what students will need to know and be able to do.
  • Post the learning targets and applicable anchor charts (see Materials list).

Tech and Multimedia

  • Work Time A: Students could annotate the text using the comments feature in an online word-processing tool such as http://eled.org/0158.

Supporting English Language Learners

Supports guided in part by CA ELD Standards 6.I.A.1, 6.I.B.5, 6.I.B.6, 6.I.B.8, 6.II.A.1, 6.II.A.2, 6.II.B.3, 6.II.B.4, 6.II.B.5, 6.II.B.6, and 6.II.B.7.

Important Points in the Lesson Itself

  • To support ELLs, this lesson continues to build upon students’ knowledge of the Space Race. Students revisit the Annotating Text protocol of Lesson 2 to determine the author’s purpose and point of view in Team Moon, a text that details the events that took place just prior to the launch of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. To provide added support, this lesson’s iteration of the Annotating Text protocol is collaborative—students work in triads to annotate the text on large chart paper. The collaboration built into this lesson allows students to learn from the ideas of their classmates as well as challenges them to build upon their classmates’ ideas. A subsequent Language Dive prompts students to further consider relationships between word connotation and author’s point of view, preparing them for the mid-unit assessment of the following lesson.
  • ELLs may find it challenging to quickly interpret and process the annotations of their classmates during the collaborative Annotating Text protocol of Work Time A. If productive, give students the choice to work alone or in pairs, rather than as a triad.

Vocabulary

  • N/A

Materials from Previous Lessons

Teacher

Student

  • Homework: Space Race Events Timeline (answers for teacher reference) (from Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 2, Homework A)
  • Module Guiding Questions anchor chart (one for display; from Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 1, Work Time C)
  • Equity sticks (from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 1, Work Time C)
  • Homework: Space Race Events Timeline (one per student; from Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 2, Homework A)
  • Homework: Apollo Missions (one per student; from Module 4, Unit 1, Lesson 3, Homework A)
  • Vocabulary logs (one per student; from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 2, Work Time B)

New Materials

Teacher

Student

  • Language Dive Guide: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 (for teacher reference)
  • Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 Sentence Chunk Chart (for teacher reference)
  • Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 note-catcher (example for teacher reference)
  • Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 (example for teacher reference)
  • Chart paper (one per triad)
  • Text: Team Moon Excerpt (one per triad for display; see In Advance)
  • Text: Team Moon Excerpt ▲
  • Colored markers (one per student)
  • Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 note-catcher (one per student and one for display)
  • Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 sentence chunk strips (one per pair of students)
  • Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 (one per student)

Assessment

Each unit in the 6-8 Language Arts Curriculum has two standards-based assessments built in, one mid-unit assessment and one end of unit assessment. The module concludes with a performance task at the end of Unit 3 to synthesize students' understanding of what they accomplished through supported, standards-based writing.

Opening

Opening

A. Engage the Learner (5 minutes)

  • Using a preferred classroom routine, review students' additions to Homework: Space Race Events Timeline based on their annotations to Homework: Apollo Missions. Refer to Homework: Space Race Events Timeline (answers for teacher reference) as needed.
  • Update the Module Guiding Questions anchor chart with any new insights gained from the homework and from the texts read in the previous lesson.
  • Repeated routine: Follow the same routine as in previous lessons to review learning targets and the purpose of the lesson, reminding students of any learning targets that are similar to or the same as previous lessons. Invite students to choose a habit of character focus for this lesson.

Work Time

Work TimeLevels of Support

A. Read Team Moon Excerpt – RI.6.6 (15 minutes)

  • Review the learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

“I can analyze the author’s point of view and purpose and how they are conveyed in the Team Moon text.”

  • Tell students that they are going to read an informational text that describes the events leading up to the Apollo 11 mission that resulted in the first moon landing.
  • As they read, students will use the Annotating Text protocol to add annotations to the text. Students participated in the Annotating Text protocol in previous lessons. Point out that this lesson features a collaborative version of the Annotating Text protocol. Students will work in triads to annotate the same text, building upon one another’s ideas. Tell students that this is not a silent activity; students should be discussing their ideas and negotiating their annotations aloud as they write.
  • Remind students that the Annotating Text protocol requires a purpose for annotation. Tell students that the purpose for today’s annotation will be (1) to determine the author’s point of view toward the Apollo 11 mission, and (2) to determine the author’s purpose in writing the text. Students should be circling, underlining, and adding annotations that help them better understand the author’s point of view in the text.
  • Turn and Talk:

“What kind of textual evidence can help us understand the author’s point of view or purpose?” (the connotations of the author’s word choices; descriptions of events; the relationship between the author and the intended audience)

  • Display the copies of Text: Team Moon Excerpt (see the In Advance section of this lesson). The remaining space on each piece of chart paper will serve as the margins in which students can write their annotations. The charts can be hung around the classroom or laid on groups of desks.
  • Display copies of Text: Team Moon Excerpt ▲ for groups with ELLs who need heavier support.
  • Strategically group students in triads. Each triad will have its own text on chart paper. Invite triads to stand next to one of the pieces of chart paper. They should begin by reading the text, either silently or aloud to one another. Once they have finished the first read, they retrieve colored markers and begin their collaborative annotation.
  • Monitor students’ work. As needed, remind students that all members of the triad need to write on the chart paper, so that one student does not dominate the activity. If students are struggling to effectively collaborate, use variations of Goal 4 Conversation Cues to help them build upon the ideas of their classmates. For example:
    • “Do you agree or disagree with what your classmate has written? Why?” (Goal 4)
    • “Who can add on to what your classmate wrote?” (Goal 4)
    • “Who can explain why your classmate came up with that annotation?” (Goal 4)
  • With 5 minutes left, invite students to rotate among the chart papers of their classmates, looking for and discussing differences in interpretations and insightful annotations.
  • Using equity sticks to call on students, ask:

“What is the author’s point of view toward the Apollo 11 mission?” (The success of the Apollo 11 mission was dependent on the hard work and intelligence of hundreds of thousands of people who worked on all the many components.)

“What is the author’s purpose for writing this text?” (The purpose is to inform readers about the preparation for the Apollo 11 mission.)

  • Repeated routine: invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning targets.

For Lighter Support

  • During Work Time A, as students participate in the Annotating Text protocol, use strategic combinations of Conversation Cues to help students who need lighter support expand the conversation by building on the ideas of others:
    • “Can you repeat what your classmate said in your own words?” (Goal 2)
    • “Can you explain why your classmate came up with that annotation?” (Goal 4)
    • “What if your classmate had said _____ instead?” (Goal 3)
    • “Can you add on to what your classmate said?” (Goal 4)

For Heavier Support

  • During Work Time A, invite students who need heavier support to use the Text: Team Moon Excerpt ▲. This resource features a glossary to support student understanding of key words in the text. Before reading the text aloud, provide time for students to read or skim the glossary.
  • During Work Time A, as students participate in the Annotating Text protocol, use strategic combinations of Conversation Cues to help students who need heavier support listen carefully to one another and deepen their thinking:
    • “Who can repeat what your classmate said?” (Goal 2)
    • “Do you agree or disagree with your classmate’s annotation? Why?” (Goal 4)
    • “How does this add to your understanding of point of view in the text?” (Goal 3)

B. Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 - RI.6.6, L.6.5 (15 minutes)

  • Tell students they will now participate in a Language Dive to explore the connotative and technical meanings of words from a sentence of Team Moon. Students will analyze the way in which these words contribute to the overall development of the author's point of view toward Apollo 11.
  • Remind them of the learning target they are working on: I can analyze the author's point of view and purpose and how they are conveyed in the Team Moon text.
  • Tell students they will now begin the Language Dive. Read aloud the excerpt from paragraph 4 of Team Moon, starting at "Space . . . it's dangerous out there," and finishing at the end of the paragraph.
  • Focus students on the sentence:
    • The compact-car-size space capsule would be greeted and surrounded by searing white-hot flames as it slammed madly back down to Earth.
  • Use the Language Dive Guide : Team Moon , Paragraph 4 (for teacher reference) and the Language Dive: Team Moon , Paragraph 4 Sentence Chunk Chart (for teacher reference) to guide students through a Language Dive conversation about the sentence. Distribute and display the Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 note-catcher, and the Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 sentence chunk strips. Refer to the Language Dive: Team Moon, Paragraph 4 note-catcher (example for teacher reference) as necessary.
  • Repeated routine: invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning targets.
  • N/A

Closing & Assessments

Closing

A. Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 – RI.6.6, RI.6.8 (10 minutes)

  • Review the learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

“I can determine an author’s claim made in an excerpt of Team Moon.”

  • Distribute Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3, and read the directions aloud.
  • Invite students to answer the questions independently. Remind students to use their new reading comprehension strategies—Annotating a Text and Retell or Reread—as needed to understand the quote from astronaut Michael Collins.
  • Refocus whole group. Review answers, referring to Exit Ticket: Unit 1, Lesson 3 (example for teacher reference) as needed.
  • Allow students time to pause and reflect on Collins’s claim in this quote. If students are comfortable doing so, allow them to discuss how they feel about his claim. Repeated routine: invite students to reflect on their habit of character focus for this lesson.

Homework

Homework

A. Complete Space Race Events Timeline

  • Students look up dates and details of one or two other Apollo missions and add them to their Homework: Space Race Events Timeline.

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