N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Transition to Common Core Standards

Grade 6

English Language Arts Module 2

Student Packet

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Dragonwings (Laurence Yep): Historical Context

Setting: 1903-1910; family farm in China; Oakland, CA

There are a lot of geographical shifts for Moon Shadow, and the move from China to America is a pretty huge one.

He leaves the hard work but comfort of his small family farm and finds himself in a foreign land rife with racial

tension and cultural shifts.

During the late 1800s, many Chinese immigrants were coming to the United States, which many native-born

Americans found very threatening. Particularly in California, white workers feared that Chinese immigrants would

take away their jobs. As a result, laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were passed.

What this means for Moon Shadow, immigrating to the United States two decades after the Exclusion Act is passed,

is that there's definitely that sense of fear and anger toward Chinese people. Those mindless "Ching Chong China-

man" taunts that Jack throws at Moon Shadow are not unique to the world within this book (Ch.7.41-44). Moon

Shadow has to embark on a new life in a foreign country, but he has to figure it out while adapting to a land where

people will treat him poorly because they associate him with larger political conflicts going on. Granted, this is not a

one-way street of xenophobia; Moon Shadow has plenty of ungenerous assumptions about non-Chinese people, too

(they are called "white demons," after all). Bottom line: the setting is super important to contextualize Yep's larger

message of belonging within our real world and history.

W.6.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas….

Task: In your own words, synthesize the information above about the historical context of Laurence Yep’s

Dragonwings in a well-structured paragraph that includes a topic or thesis statement and concrete details.

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/dragonwings/setting.html

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Inspections on Angel Island – Collaborative Conversation Activity

Source: http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/content.php?pid=410093

What inferences can you draw about how Moon Shadow must have felt when he experienced this kind

of inspection by looking at this picture?

My thoughts… My partner’s thoughts…

Angel Island is the west coast's

equivalent to Ellis Island, but located

here in the San Francisco Bay area. It

has a dark, but important history

because the island was used to imprison

Chinese immigrants and to hold them

indefinitely and without cause (early

1900s).

In Dragonwings, Moon Shadow must

pass through inspections on Angel

Island. Working with a partner, examine

the photo showing this kind of

inspection closely, and share your

thoughts with each other.

Then answer the question below.

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

The New Colossus

1 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

2 With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

3 Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

4 A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

5 Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

6 Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

7 Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

8 The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

9 "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

10 With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

11 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

12 The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

13 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

14 I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

By: Emma Lazarus

Source: www.poemhunter.com

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Boost Intelligence by Focusing on Growth Why some people learn more from their mistakes

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Is intelligence innate, or can you boost it with effort? The way you answer that question may determine

how well you learn. Those who think smarts are malleable are more likely to bounce back from their

mistakes and make fewer errors in the future, according to a study published last October in Psychological

Science.

Researchers at Michigan State University asked 25 undergraduate students to participate in a simple,

repetitive computer task: they had to press a button whenever the letters that appeared on the screen

conformed to a particular pattern. When they made a mistake, which happened about 9 percent of the

time, the subjects realized it almost immediately—at which point their brain produced two tiny electrical

responses that the researchers recorded using electrodes. The first reaction indicates awareness that a

mistake was made, whereas the second, called error positivity, is believed to represent the desire to fix that

slipup. Later, the researchers asked the students whether they believed intelligence was fixed or could be

learned.

Although everyone slowed down after erring, those who were “growth-minded”—that is, people who

considered intelligence to be pliable—elicited stronger error-positivity responses than the other subjects.

They subsequently made fewer mistakes, too. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, I did something wrong, I should slow

down,’ but it was only the growth-minded individuals who actually did something with that information

and made it better,” explains lead author Jason Moser, a clinical psychologist at Michigan State.

People who are not so inclined, however, can change their approach, Moser adds. “A growth mind-set is

about focusing on the process—as in the experience—rather than only on the outcome,” he says. “Setbacks

are opportunities to gain information and learn for the next time, so pay attention to what went wrong and

get the information you need to improve.”

Source: Wenner Moyer, Melinda. "The Oops! Response." Scientific American, March/April 2012 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-oops-response

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball By Scott Simon

Overview

The first African American major league ballplayer of the twentieth century was a hard-nosed, high-spirited athlete who became one of the most admired personalities in the country. Jackie Robinson personified courage from the minute he stepped into the major leagues, adorned proudly in his Dodger blue. Nevertheless, he was a man who bore a daily, bloody trial of vicious attacks, race-baiting taunts, and death threats, risking both his safety and his sanity in order to simply play the game. The strain would end his life far too soon -- but he gave his life for something great, as all heroes do.

In Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, renowned broadcaster Scott Simon brings his passion for baseball and civil rights to this crucial moment in history. He deftly captures the drama of Robinson's first year in baseball, tracing his journey from rookie to Rookie of the Year, the award that now bears Robinson's name.

At the close of World War II, no nation was freer or stronger than the United States -- and yet few major nations so openly subjugated so many of their own citizens. Simon recounts how Robinson struggled with racism both in the army and on the baseball diamond, finally landing a place in the Negro Leagues as a shortstop. Just at the time when the country was beginning to question the morality of racial segregation, Robinson was battling bigotry every step of the way -- from his entry into the minor leagues; to Opening Day, April 15, 1947, when he helped the Brooklyn Dodgers win; to his first World Series.

But for the man who "just wanted to be treated like any other player," the goal of integrating the major leagues was worth every moment of agony and anguish. Simon reveals how Robinson's skills and daring turned adversaries into admirers. For every piece of hate mail, for every epithet called across the field, there were prayers, greeting cards, and letters of encouragement from Southerners and Brooklynites, rabbis and ministers. And thanks to that seminal year, Robinson paved the way for scores of black players to finally join organized baseball. This important story of a man of remarkable conviction is by turns inspiring, emotional, and uplifting.

Excerpt:

“…But even by this wiser standard, Jackie Robinson was a hero. The baseball diamond is not simply a playing field in his story. It was the ground on which he was most open and vulnerable to taunts, threats, and sharpened spikes.

The first African American major league ballplayer of the twentieth century routinely took his rolling, pigeon-toed stride out into the infield or batter's box on days and nights when local police had culled the stadium's mail to show him an assortment of explicit and persuasive death threats. It is tempting today, when Jackie Robinson is enshrined in halls of fame, social studies curricula, classroom calendars, songs, and statues, to suppose those threats were empty. But in the late 1940s, beatings, bombings, lynchings, and shootings scarred the landscape of the United States. They could be just as public as… baseball games.

Jackie Robinson gave his life for something great; heroes do. He chose to bear the daily, bloody trial of standing up to bean balls and cleats launched into his shins, chest, and chin, and the race-baiting taunts raining down from the stands, along with trash, tomatoes, rocks, watermelon slices, and Sambo dolls. And then he performed with eloquent achievement and superlative poise. Robinson allowed that hatred to strike him as it would a lightning rod, channeling it down into the rugged earth of himself. All that America saw for many years on the baseball field was that iron as upright as a steeple, never bending. But inside, the strain slowed his body, whitened his hair, thickened his circulation, aggravated his diabetes, and rendered him slow and blind. He was dead by the age of fifty-three—a martyr (a word as deliberately applied as hero) to trying to make America live up to its creed.

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

If Jackie Robinson had not been selected to play the role he performed so well, no doubt other superb African American athletes would have soon stepped onto the stage. The skills of Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Sam Jethroe, Ray Dandridge, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks, and an aging Satchel Paige were too great not to tempt major league clubs who were searching for new sources of talent. World War II had moved many Americans to examine their nation's own self-image as a bulwark of freedom. Editorial writers and civic leaders were already clamoring for America to integrate the armed forces, which had just won the world's liberty, the schools, in which children learned about justice, and sports, which purported to epitomize American values. How could a young black man who might be called up to risk his life backing up Pee Wee Reese in Guam, or Yogi Berra in Normandy, not be allowed to earn a living alongside them on the same playing field?

America's modern civil rights revolution was already stirring by the time Jackie Robinson arrived in major league baseball. With Vernon Johns, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and many more, it had already produced heroes. But Robinson's courage and accomplishment put a familiar face on the kind of bravery that it took for blacks to stand up for their rights. His heroism was no greater than that of millions of others—some achievements simply cannot fit into box scores. But Robinson's renown gave his heroism reach. It is possible to see, in Robinson's slow, purposeful walk into the face of taunts and threats, some of the same unbowed courage that Americans would later admire in the civil rights marchers who faced down stinging water sprays, sharp rocks, and snapping police dogs. When Robinson joined Dr. Martin Luther King's nonviolent campaign in Birmingham in 1963, marchers called out, “Show us, Jackie!”

Jackie Robinson is so highly esteemed for his Gandhian restraint against the onslaughts of bigotry that it is easy to mistake him for a social activist. He certainly became a militant campaigner for civil rights, an outspoken newspaper columnist, and a combative Republican when that party was more identified among blacks with Lincoln, La Guardia, Rockefeller, and Lindsay, while the Democrats were dishonored by Strom Thurmond, Orville Faubus, and George Wallace.

But first and last, Jackie Robinson was a hard-nosed… fire-breathing athlete. The Jackie Robinson that his old Pasadena and UCLA teammates remembered could be a petulant star. He mocked lesser competitors and came to expect that his regal status on fields of play would excuse him from the need to attend class or complete assignments; and so it did. When, on a couple of occasions, Robinson's high spirits and dark skin brought him into the grasp of the Pasadena police, his case was considered with compassion by a local judge, who was loath to deliver a penalty that would cause the accused to miss next Saturday's game. Few other young black men in Southern California could rally so effective a defense as Robinson's in rushing yards, passes caught, and punts returned…

Among a group of gifted professionals who had to endure all-night rides on bone-clattering buses and blocked doors at whites-only diners and motels, Jackie Robinson was remembered more for griping about the league's showboating and lack of training and discipline. He let his teammates know that he considered the league beneath his talents (and maybe it was—for all of them).

The Jackie Robinson who stayed on to become a perennial major league star after he became a hero could be prickly… Even after he had become one of the most admired personalities in America, Robinson could spring up and cry racism at umpires with the impudence to call him out on a close slide or a strike. He could crash into an opponent's knees on inconsequential plays, just to let them know he could hurt them. He harangued opposing players, and sometimes his own teammates, with graphic epithets of the kind that would have once been considered legal provocation for a duel (although the epithets were never racial and rarely sexual—Jackie Robinson was no racist, and he was even a bit of a prude).

But Jackie Robinson was no less a hero for being a full-blooded human being. When he was summoned by history, he risked his safety and sanity to give history the last full measure of his strength, nerve, and perseverance. In the end, real heroes give us stories we use to reinforce our own lives…”

Source: http://www.questia.com/read/106254881/jackie-robinson-and-the-integration-of-baseball

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Central Idea/Evidence

Name

Period Date

Title of Reading: “Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball”

Thesis/Central Idea: What qualities did Jackie Robinson have as he paved the way for scores of black players to finally

join organized baseball? Specific Phrase or Statement How it Supports the Central Idea

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

R.6.2 Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

Name: ___________________________________________ Period: __________ Date:______________________________

Cause and Effect

Effect Effect

Cause

Effect Effect

N: ELA-Secondary/ Gr. 6_ELA Module-Sem. 2_Student Packet/1-2014/LB-CN Educational Services – CISS

As you read this article, consider using highlighters to mark the outcomes associated with “luck” in one color

and those associated with “perseverance” in another.

Luck vs. Perseverance Posted on March 23, 2013 by Tyler H. Jolley

My road to writing started in college after I saw an interview with Nicholas Sparks on Oprah. Yes, I

watched Oprah when I was in college…well my wife Jeena watched it and I happened to be in the

room. Nicholas was talking about how he was able to pay off his student loans from pharmacy school

by writing. At the time I was in dental school so the student loans were enormous.

I have always been a sci-fi nerd and loved all things Star Wars. I even had a full size Han Solo cardboard

cutout in my bedroom. Frustrated with some of my professors I decided to write a sci-fi novel about

an intergalactic foreign exchange student and mirror the teachers after a few problematic professors. I

quickly realized I loved writing and it helped me relax and take a break from the intense curriculum.

Since I was in school I was left with little time to sleep, let alone write and it took me a few years to

write my first book, but I persevered. By the time I had finished the book I was done with school, had

three kids, and opened two offices in Colorado. It was time to find a publisher and it turned out finding

a publisher was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I just kept getting doors slammed in my face. I even

read, “How to get Your Book Published for Dummies.” Finally, after two years I found Double Dragon

Publishing and they accepted my book. Nothing seemed to come easy when it came to my first book

Neto Lexan and the Impox Secret, but I accomplished my goal and I was a bona fide, published author.

Then luck came upon me. As I was trying to navigate getting my book published I was introduced to a

local author, Sherry D. Ficklin. She pointed me the right direction and gave me pointers with editing

my book, her help was invaluable. Then one day she approached me about a book she wanted to

write. She was having a hard time nailing the teenage male character. At first I thought she just

wanted some input. Being a perpetual kid, and with my patient base being mostly kids, I was the

perfect go-to person. Then I realized she actually wanted me to co-author the book. Right place, right

time…and my Peter Pan Syndrome* was finally paying off. We had not one but two publishing

companies trying to publish our book. No doors were being slammed in our faces. It was such a

different experience from my first book.

So the question luck versus perseverance, in my case, I think is a marriage of both. Everyone has a

unique story, but my experience has been this: Those who persevere will find luck.

*The 'Peter Pan Syndrome' affects people who do not want to or feel unable to grow up; people with the body of an adult but the mind of a child.

Source: http://scene13ers.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/luck-vs-perseverance/

N:ELA-Secondary/Gr.6-ELA Module-Sem.2-Exit Slips/12-18-2013/SK

Name: ____________________________________________ Period: _____ DATE: _________________

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Exit Slip

Prompt: Is “luck” merely chance, or do persistence and opportunity play a role?

Prompt: ___________________________________________________________