Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

• L.6.1d – Opening A: Students complete an entrance ticket in which they revise sentences to correct a vague or ambiguous pronoun.
• W.6.4 – Work Time A: Students analyze a model narrative letter. This exercise supports students in producing their own clear and coherent narrative letters during Work Time B.
• RL.6.1 – Work Time B: Students write a narrative letter from Cal to Possum, in which they announce Cal’s plans to return to Challagi Indian Industrial School. They use evidence from the text to support their ideas.
• RL.6.3 – Work Time B: In their narrative letters, written from Cal’s perspective, students illustrate ways in which Cal has changed over the course of the text.
• W.6.3 – Work Time B: Students write narrative letters, imagining that they are Cal. They use relevant descriptive details and structured event sequence.
• W.6.4 – Work Time B: Students produce narrative letters, whose organization and style are appropriate for the task, purpose, and audience.
• W.6.9a – Work Time B: Students apply Grade 6 Reading standards to literature writing narrative letters that illustrate the way that Cal has changed across Two Roads.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

• Consider expanding this narrative letter to a more formal and assessed writing task. This can be done with additional mini lessons on author’s craft with a focus on conveying Cal’s character through the use of language.
• Recording, listening to, and reflecting on one’s own speech can be a valuable strategy for improving fluency, intonation, and overall clarity. If possible, consider making the recordings from Closing and Assessment A available to ELLs after class. Encourage students to listen to themselves read their letters aloud and then reflect on the effectiveness of their recording, thinking of stars and steps for future speaking work. Urge students to move beyond critique of their accents—everyone speaks with an accent, and accents are an important part of who we are!—and instead consider aspects of their speech like volume, pacing, enunciation, and intonation. ▲
• Task selected students with experimenting with different audio recording tools. Invite them to determine the tool they believe will work best for the End of Unit 3 Assessment and model for the class how to use the resource. Incorporate argument writing skills by having them write a claim, supported by reasons, evidence, and reasoning to justify their choice of audio recording tool.

How It Builds on Previous Work

• In the previous lesson, students gathered evidence to use to write a narrative letter from Cal to Possum. In this lesson they write the letter after studying a model. They have also previously had instruction about pronoun case and sentence variety. This lesson continues and expands that instruction as final preparation for the end of unit assessment.

Support All Students

• Because the narratives are written as personal letters, specific narrative structural elements of their writing are less important. The main purpose of using letter as a structure is to mirror the writing that happens in the plot and to gain insight into the main character and the reasoning for his decisions. Additionally, the revised narratives will be assessed for language standards, not writing standards, for the end of unit assessment. The model analysis focuses on some basic features of letter writing and on the content being conveyed from Cal’s perspective and with language that is consistent with what students have come to understand about him and his relationship with Possum. Support students by clearly delineating these standards and expectations before they begin to write. Remind students they are not going to be assessed on their narrative writing ability; during Lesson 13, which is the end of unit assessment, they will revise their letter for use of pronouns and sentence variety.
• Help students practice empathy and imagination as they write letters to Possum from Cal. Increase engagement by encouraging them to apply what they know about Cal's relationship with Possum to their letters.

Assessment Guidance

• The recording completed during Closing and Assessment A in this lesson does not specify the method to be used. This activity is included here for two reasons. The first is so that students can practice using the recording methods that they will use for the performance task, and the second is to provide an additional opportunity for students to practice their fluency and speaking skills. Adjust the specifics of this activity as necessary based on student needs and site resources.

Down the Road

• In the next lesson, students take the end of unit assessment, in which they revise their narrative letter for pronoun usage and sentence variety.