Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

• Instruction of focus assessment standards occurs in the following:
• RL.7.1 – In Work Time A of this lesson, students use evidence from literary texts to infer the topic of the module.
• RI.7.1 – In Work Time A of this lesson, students use evidence from informational texts to infer the topic of the module.
• In Work Time B, students encounter the performance task and the guiding questions for the module, as well as the module’s anchor text. The Performance Task anchor chart (for teacher reference) and all performance task materials are included in the Performance Task Overview and Resources.
• In Work Time C, students explore the anchor text A Long Walk to Water, noticing and wondering about text and graphic features.
• In Closing and Assessment A, students use the Think-Pair-Share protocol to engage in a collaborative discussion about their academic mindsets.
• In this lesson, students do not collect new vocabulary independently. Instead, the class collects new vocabulary on the academic word wall. Students are introduced to their vocabulary logs in the future, where they will collect vocabulary from the texts they read.
• In this lesson, students engage in a protocol. A protocol consists of agreed-upon, detailed guidelines for reading, recording, discussing, or reporting that ensure equal participation and accountability in learning. Protocols are an important feature of our curriculum because they are one of the best ways we know to engage students in discussion, inquiry, critical thinking, and sophisticated communication. You can download the Classroom Protocols document from our Tools page for the full versions of all protocols, which you will use throughout the curriculum.
  Students engage in the following new protocol in this lesson (instructions for which appear at the first point of use in the lesson):
• Think-Pair-Share promotes productive and equitable conversations, where all students are given the time and space to think, share, and consider the ideas of others. It ensures that all students simultaneously engage with the same text or topic, while promoting synthesis and the social construction of knowledge.
• In this lesson, students also engage in several total participation techniques. Total participation techniques are used to solicit answers to questions or prompts from a wide variety of students. Rather than just calling on those students who may have their hands raised, these total participation techniques challenge and hold accountable all students. In this lesson, students engage in the following new total participation techniques (instructions for which appear at the first point of use in the lesson):
• Turn and Talk is one of the easiest, quickest, and most efficient means of creating collaboration among students. It can be used practically at any time, anywhere, in a lesson in any content area.
• Cold Call serves as an engaging and challenging yet supportive way to hold students accountable for answering oral questions, regardless of whether a hand is raised. Cold Call requires students to think and interact with the question at hand, even if they’re not sure of the answer. Cold Call also promotes equity in the classroom; students who normally dominate the discourse step back and allow other students to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise.
• Thumb-O-Meter helps visualize student comfort level or readiness in relation to a learning target or aspect of their work using their thumb. Adjust the instruction accordingly.
• Red Light, Green Light helps visualize student comfort level or readiness in relation to a learning target or aspect of their work, using objects, colors, locations, or shared metaphors. Adjust the instruction accordingly.
• Equity Sticks ensure academic equity by physically tracking who has been called upon or interacted with during the course of the class. This is especially useful during whole-class discussions or while working with large groups of students.
• This lesson is the first that includes built-out instruction for the use of Goal 1 Conversation Cues. Conversation Cues are questions that promote productive and equitable conversation (adapted from Michaels, Sarah and Cathy O’Connor. Talk Science Primer. TERC, 2012. http://inquiryproject.terc.edu/shared/pd/TalkScience_Primer.pdf. Based on Chapin, Suzanne, et al. Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn, Grades K–6. 2nd ed., Math Solutions Publications, 2009). Goal 1 Conversation Cues encourage all students to talk and be understood. As the modules progress, Goals 2, 3, and 4 Conversation Cues are gradually introduced. To review the complete set of cues, refer to Overview–Conversation Cues on the Tools Page (http://eled.org/tools). Provide students with a thinking journal or scrap paper. Examples of the Goal 1 Conversation Cues are (with expected responses):
• After any question that requires thoughtful consideration and allows time for students to think and process language internally:

“I’ll give you time to think and write or sketch.”

“I’ll give you time to discuss this with a partner.”

• To help students share, expand, and clarify thoughts:

“Can you say more about that?” 

“Sure. I think that _____.”

“Can you give an example?”

“OK. One example is _____.”

“So, do you mean _____?”

“You’ve got it./No, sorry, that’s not what I mean. I mean _____.”

• Conversation Cues are similar to discussion norms, which are introduced in a future lesson, in that they seek to foster productive and collaborative conversation. Furthermore, Conversation Cues aim to ensure equitable conversation by gradually building student capacity to become productive, collaborative participants. Goal 1 Conversation Cues focus on the fundamentals of encouraging students to talk and be understood. Goals 2–4 take students to deeper levels of conversation, from listening to others, to deepening their thinking, to thinking with others. (SL.7.1a, SL.7.1b) ▲
• Students are introduced to academic mindsets in Closing and Assessment A of this lesson. Academic mindsets refer to the motivational components that influence a student's desire and will to engage in learning. Research shows that academic mindsets are a better predictor of student success than any other determining factor. Students will develop an understanding of all four as the module progresses. The Academic Mindsets are listed below:

1. I belong in this academic community.
2. I can succeed at this.
3. My ability and competence grow with my effort.
4. This work has value for me.

• At the end of the lesson, distribute the Homework Resources and review the format of the document and this lesson’s specific assignment with students. You will find the homework resources in the unit downloads on each Unit landing page.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

• During Work Time A, observe student interaction and allow them to grapple. Provide supportive frames and demonstrations only after students have grappled with the task. Observe the areas in which they need additional support.
• After Work Time B, invite students to reflect on additional examples of stories about refugees.

How It Builds on Previous Work

• If students have worked on EL Education modules in previous grades, this module will build on those foundations.

Support All Students 

• Integrated ELL supports are marked throughout lessons with a ▲. These teaching suggestions support student comprehension without disrupting lesson flow or requiring extensive class time or additional materials. Deeper, high-leverage supports, designed to accelerate ELLs’ language development, can be found in the Levels of Support columns in each lesson.
• Students may need additional support reading the text excerpts in the Infer the Topic protocol during Work Time A. Invite students to help each other by reading the excerpts aloud to each other.
• Note there is a differentiated version of Infer the Topic: I Notice/I Wonder note-catcher used in Work Time A in the supporting materials download. Differentiated versions of some materials are available in many lessons as a way to provide additional support to ELLs. ▲
• In this lesson, pair ELLs with a native speaker to support their comprehension. In addition, consider strategic grouping for ELLs at this point in the year, and continue to vary grouping according to the task over the year. Pair ELLs with a partner who has more advanced or native language proficiency. The partner with greater language proficiency can serve as a model in the pair, initiating discussions and providing implicit sentence frames, for example. ▲
• A Long Walk to Water includes depictions of war, poverty, death, and the experiences of refugees. These issues may be sensitive for students, and some students may connect with these topics personally or deeply. After reading these sections of the text for the gist, students have time to reflect. Monitor students and determine if there are issues surfacing that need to be discussed in more detail as a whole group, in smaller groups, or independently. Reflections may be personal, and students are not required to share them.
• Where possible, invite students to share their own experiences or understandings of Africa, and ensure they recognize that Africa is a huge continent containing many countries. Ensure they recognize that Sudan is just one country in this continent and that this topic is focused on one specific event in the country’s history.

Assessment Guidance

• Monitor students’ I Notice/I Wonder note-catchers in Work Time A to ensure they are on the right track for inferring what the module is about at the end of the Infer the Topic protocol.

Down the Road

• In the next lesson, students will spend some time discussing their reflections on the module guiding questions. Students will read and discuss the first chapter of A Long Walk to Water and also begin considering what it means to be “ethical” in the context of the classroom and in relation to the materials they are reading. Their engagement with the text and classroom discussions in this lesson will help prepare them for deeper analysis of the novel in the following lessons.