Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

• L.6.3a – Opening A: Students complete an entrance ticket in which they revise a paragraph to improve meaning and sentence variety.
• L.6.1c – Work Time A: Students participate in a mini lesson to learn more about pronoun person and number.
• W.6.1b – Work Time B: Students begin to fill out their Independent Argument Evidence note-catchers. They gather reasons and evidence to support an argument that Cal should return to Challagi Indian Industrial School.
• W.6.9a – Work Time B: Students apply Grade 6 Reading standards to literature by planning narrative letters that illustrate the way that Cal has changed across Two Roads.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

• At Grade 7, the L.3 standard requires students to choose precise language that eliminates wordiness and redundancy. Build on the work during Opening A of this lesson by asking students to compose a description of the same scene that uses more concise language. Additionally, invite students to find a passage of the text that effectively uses brief but powerful sentences to add meaning to the plot.

How It Builds on Previous Work

• In the previous lesson, students finished reading Two Roads and capturing information on their Point of View and Character note-catchers. In this lesson, students use that work to direct them as they start to gather evidence that will be incorporated into a narrative letter from Cal to Possum. This work will also help them prepare for the argument essay writing that happens in Unit 3. They have also previously had instruction about pronoun case and sentence variety. This lesson continues and expands that instruction.

Support All Students

• Note that there is a differentiated version of the Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 11 used in Opening A in the separate Teacher’s Guide for English Language Learners. ▲
• The pronoun mini lesson in this lesson is focused on person and number, and the materials maintain the more conventional usage of “they” as a third-person, plural pronoun. Please be aware, and consider alerting students, that the usage of they has shifted in current practice, and it is acceptable to use as a gender-neutral third person, singular pronoun. This note provides an excellent entry point for a discussion about the evolving nature of language and its power to convey subtle, nuanced messages about the writer’s point of view or values.
• During Work Time B, some students, including ELLs, may find it challenging to complete their Independent Argument Evidence note-catchers. As needed, allow students to use sticky notes in their books to mark evidence, rather than writing quotations in the Evidence sections of their note-catchers. Encourage students to focus their energy developing the Elaboration and Reason sections. ▲

Assessment Guidance

• The pronoun instruction completed in this lesson assumes that students have some knowledge of subjects and predicates in sentences. Review these concepts, as necessary, to ensure clarity while students work to understand the continued pronoun work in Work Time A.

Down the Road

• In the next lesson, students study a model of a narrative letter from Cal to Possum about why he is not returning to Challagi and instead is staying with Pop. They then write their own narrative letter from Cal to Possum that explains why he is returning to Challagi.