Borderlands: Theories and Stories - Grade 9
The work in this unit of study is built around four texts or text sets: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a selection from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson,” and a compilation of stories written by students during the unit. The central concept for all of the work with these texts is Anzaldúa’s notion of “borderlands”—those places she describes as “physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy.”
Table of Contents
Writing Tasks
Title: Tracking Persepolis
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-4
Point out that the tracking form is designed to help students monitor and keep track of the information in the text. This will not only help students make sense of the reading for the first assignment, but it will also support them in later assignments in this unit.
Title: The First Assignment Retelling Persepolis
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1-4
Explain to students that their job over the next few days is to read Satrapi’s book. The tracking form and the assignment sheet will help focus this first reading.
Review the first assignment for Persepolis with the class and explain that the next few days will be set aside so that students can complete this work. Retell- ings offer an opportunity to think carefully about what happened in a text and help support the interpretive work to follow. Point out that you will collect the “retelling” papers at the end of this round of work and will then duplicate three or four of the papers that the class can study together during Session 5. This will be made easier if students submit digital copies of their retellings which can be electronically shared with the class.
Title: The Second Assignment: Writing About Satrapi’s Message
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 6
Review the second assignment for Persepolis with the class. Note that the first question asks students to look for the arguments—plural—in the text, while the second question seeks a more overarching response: What is Satrapi’s overall purpose in writing this text that makes these kinds of arguments?
Title: The Third Assignment: Wrapping Up the Work
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 11
Review the assignment with the class. Parts of this work will function more like a reflection; other parts will more closely resemble persuasive writing. This assignment, as it says, is a sort of end-cap to the work with Persepolis (though we will still refer back to the novel throughout the unit), and allows students a final opportunity to process not only the content and Satrapi’s arguments, but also their own thoughts and feelings about these arguments.
Title: The First Assignment: Retelling Borderlands/La Frontera
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 14
Review the first assignment with the class and answer any questions students have about the work. As with Persepolis, this retelling work offers an opportunity to think through the structure and flow of a complex text, reviewing and processing its content and ideas to help support the more complex work to follow.
Title: The Second Assignment Writing About Anzaldúa’s Arguments
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 15
Answer any questions students have about the assignment and then give them time to begin rereading the selection and making notes. As with Persepolis, this is time to reread for a specific purpose. Students may skim through some parts, flip around and read sections out of order, return to read some moments more carefully, etc. Suggest that as they start to think of ideas, they should “test” these ideas against other moments in the text. Does the same idea apply throughout the text, or do they need to add to or otherwise modify their thinking?
Suggested Student Materials: Informational_Explanatory Checklist
Title: Reading “The Lesson” as a Borderlands Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 22
Remind the class that one of the important and interesting things people can do with texts is to read one text through the “frame” or lens set out in another. In this assignment, students are asked to reread “The Lesson” through the borderlands lens Anzaldúa sets out in her essay.
Title: Reading Persepolis as a Borderlands Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 24
Remind the class that one of the important and interesting things people can do with texts is to read one text through the frame set out in another. In this assignment, students are asked to reread Satrapi’s book through the borderlands lens Anzaldúa works out in her essay.
Title: Writing a Borderlands Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 28
Take time to brainstorm with students a list of short assignments they might complete as they work on their story. Use the sequencing in the sessions that follow and your own sense of your students’ needs to guide the development of this list.
Title: The Final Assignment Revising a Borderlands Paper
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 36
Charts for Discussion
Title: Persepolis: Whole-Class Retelling
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 5
After discussing the three or four “retelling” papers as a whole group, invite the class to work with you to generate a whole-class reconstruction of Persepolis. This retelling should aim to be more comprehensive than some of the student retellings, but will still necessarily reflect the class’s sense of what is most significant in the text. (For this reason, each class’s retelling will inevitably be somewhat different.)
Capture the results of this work on chart titled “Persepolis: Whole-Class Retelling” and ask students to recreate a version of it in their notebooks as well. If you have created a digital copy, this can be shared with students or printed and copied.
Title: Criteria for Solid Text-Based Interpretations
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 7
Wrap up this lesson by asking the class to help you distill a list of criteria for good interpretations. Capture this list on a chart titled “Criteria for Solid Text-Based Interpretations.” This list will provide a reference for students as they read and evaluate each other’s papers in Session 9.
Title: Ways of Working With Sources in Text-Based Writing
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 8
Capture these ways of working with sources on a chart titled “Ways of Working With Sources in Text-Based Writing.” As is often the case, this may be easiest if created digitally, allowing you to save and share the chart with ease.
Craft the chart so that it accounts for the class’s discoveries and illustrates each by excerpting passages from the text-based model. This chart should be considered a “working” chart—one that the class can add to as students discover new ways of working with sources in text-based work.
Title: Questions About “Towards a New Consciousness”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Capture students’ questions about the text on a “Questions About ‘Towards a New Consciousness’” chart so you may return to them as appropriate during the discussion today and in the following sessions.
Title: Borderlands/La Frontera: Whole-Class Retelling
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 14
Capture the results of this work on a chart (or another display) titled some- thing like “Borderlands/La Frontera: Whole-Class Retelling” and ask students to recreate a version of the class’s retelling in their notebooks as well. If you have created a digital copy, this can be shared with students or printed and copied.
This whole-class retelling will serve as a common reference map to Anzaldúa’s selection for the work ahead and should, as such, include line numbers of the moments cited.
Title: Significant Moments in “The Lesson”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 20
Set aside a few minutes for the closing meeting even if there was not time to finish the work period task. Finished or not, it will be important for students to have an opportunity to begin to identify significant moments in the text.
Reconvene the class and ask students to share those moments in the text they consider significant. Record these moments on a two-column chart titled “Significant Moments in ‘The Lesson.’”
Place summaries of the text selections in one column and line numbers in the other. This chart will serve as an index that can be easily referenced in the sessions ahead.
Title: Seeing “The Lesson” as a Borderlands Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 22
Reconvene the class and hold a brief sharing session where volunteers are encouraged to offer up their descriptions of the world of “The Lesson” as a borderland. List these items on a chart that students can review and add to during the next few sessions. You can title this chart something like “Seeing ‘The Lesson’ as a Borderlands Story.”
» As students share, ask for brief rationales for their descriptions, but resist the urge to launch into a full-blown discussion.
» Remind students that this is difficult interpretive work. They are reading a story through a lens provided by another. The question to keep in mind is this: “What does this lens help me see and say about this story that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to notice?”
» This is work that will die quickly if students feel like there are right and wrong answers they need to find. Work hard to remind students to take their own ideas seriously. Rather than worrying about whether they are right or wrong, they should use their energy to ask hard questions about their ideas: Does my answer or claim stand up to scrutiny? Can I explain it by citing moments from the text? Is it an idea other people could build on or help me think about?
» After students have shared, you might decide to take a moment to share your own ideas about “The Lesson” as borderlands story. Use this demonstration to reiterate the importance of clear claims and solid explanations anchored in specific moments in the text(s). However, be cautious in how much you offer: Students will often latch onto ideas offered by the teacher as “the right answer,” and this may limit the discussions that follow.
Checks for Understanding
Title: Arguments We See In Persepolis
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 6
Briefly reconvene the class and invite volunteers to share a few of the arguments they see Satrapi making.
Resist the urge to discuss these arguments at this time. Instead, view this as an opportunity to share some examples of arguments that will help the rest of the class obtain a clearer idea of what an argument can look like in the text. Capture these arguments in the form of brief statements on a chart titled “Arguments We See In Persepolis.”
Title: During Text-Based Discussions….
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 10
At the end of the conversation, reconvene the class and ask students to help you retrace the text-based discussion. Ask students to help you recall what happened during the discussion: to notice how the class looked for claims a student made; to notice places where a person extended or critiqued another person’s reading of the text; to notice what the facilitator did to focus and refocus the discussion; and to notice instances in which participants used the text to substantiate or explain an interpretation. In short, use this time to guide students to do the metacognitive work they need to do in order to notice what must happen for this kind of work to get done well.
Capture these “noticings” on a chart titled “During Text-Based Discussions….”
Remind students they will submit their fully-revised final drafts for the second assignment at the beginning of the next session.
Title: Anzaldúa’s Claims About Borderlands
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Check for understanding: In addition to facilitating this conversation, the teacher should also work with the students to generate a chart that captures the students’ responses to the question. (The chart can be titled something like “Anzaldúa’s Claims About Borderlands.”) Be sure to include page and line numbers so that students can use the chart to locate these moments later on.
Title: Arguments We See in the Anzaldúa Selection
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 15
Check for understanding: Briefly reconvene the class and invite volunteers to share a few of the arguments they see Anzaldúa making. Resist the urge to discuss these arguments at this time. Instead, view this as an opportunity to share some examples of arguments that will help the rest of the class obtain a clearer idea of what an argument can look like in the text.
Capture these arguments in the form of brief statements on a piece of chart paper titled “Arguments We See in the Anzaldúa Selection.”
Title: “The Lesson”: Claims and Evidence
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 21
Check for understanding: Record the interpretations students offer on a chart titled “The Lesson: Claims and Evidence.”
Title: Seeing Persepolis as a Borderland
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 24
Reconvene the class and hold a brief sharing session where volunteers are encouraged to offer up their descriptions of Persepolis as a borderland.
Ask for brief rationales for these offerings as needed, but resist the urge to launch into a full-blown discussion. List the items on a chart titled “Seeing Persepolis as a Borderland” that students can review and add to during the next few sessions.
Remind the class that this is difficult interpretive work. They are reading a book through a lens provided by another. The important question here is: What does this lens help me see and say about this book that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to notice? This is work that will die quickly if students feel like there are right and wrong answers that they need to find. Work hard to remind them that they should take their own ideas seriously and that, rather than worrying about whether they are right or wrong, they should use their energy to ask hard questions about their ideas. (For example, does my answer or claim stand up to scrutiny? Can I explain it by citing moments from the text? Is it an idea other people could build on or help me think about?)
Independent Reading
Title: Book Interview
Instructions:
Display a copy of the “Book Interview” sheet for the class to see and distribute copies to students.
Using one of the books from the classroom library, model for students how to interview a book and how to fill out the sheet. Answer any questions students have about the form and its terminology.
Give students time to interview three books and to enter their findings on the “Book Interview” sheet.
Title: Book Pass
Instructions:
Organize students’ desks into a circle (or, if this is not possible, determine a very clear path for books to pass through the group).
Explain the purpose of a book pass:
A book pass is another way to expose students to the texts available in the classroom library. A book pass requires students to use their book interviewing skills. A book pass is a chance for students to find titles to add to their “Books I’d Like to Read” list.
Display a copy of the “Book Pass” for the class to see and pass out copies to students.
Demonstrate for the class how a person goes about making an entry on the form. Since students will need to write quickly, show how an author can be listed just by last name and first initial, and demonstrate how a student can abbreviate a long title if necessary. What matters is that they have enough information to track down the book again later if they need to.
Give each student one book (or magazine). Tell them it doesn’t matter which text they start with, because they will see all—or at least many of—the books. (Be sure you have one title for each student in the circle.)
Choose a direction for passing.
After students receive a book, they should immediately record the author’s name (if the text is a book) and title on the “Book Pass” form.
Give students one minute to interview each book following the procedure established in the previous session.
At the end of one minute, call “pass.” At this time, students should make an entry in the comments column and pass the book to the next student.
Continue the book pass until each student has interviewed all the books.
Title: Book Recommendation
Instructions:
Distribute copies of the “Book Recommendation” form to students and give them time to craft or begin crafting their first review. Students can choose to write about a book they’ve completed recently or one they remember well from past reading.
Title: Goals for My Reading Life
Instructions:
Display a copy of “Goals for My Reading Life” for the class to see and distribute copies to students.
Use this time to review how to fill out the goals sheet. Be sure to show students how they can use the charts to generate ideas for answers to the “Goals” questions.
Take a moment to stress the value and function of the “Books I’d Like to Read” list. Point out that this list is a tool that serves the same function as a bedside table for some readers: It is a place to store up titles or books that are “next in line.” Remind the class that readers constantly have their eyes open for “next” texts. A “Books I’d Like to Read List” is a way to prevent aimless and unproductive castings around for new reading materials. It’s a planning tool.
Explain that at the beginning of each marking period, each student will fill out a new goals sheet; at at the end of each marking period, students will take a few minutes to review their goals statements and reflect on their efforts to meet them.
Answer any questions students have about the “Goals for My Reading Life” forms.
Give students time to complete the form and set a deadline for submission. You may decide to photocopy these to keep a set for yourself. Return the forms to students during the next session and have them attach the form to a page in their notebook or save it for their student portfolio (see Creating a Student Portfolio).
Title: Reading Log
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Show students how to set up a “Reading Log” in their notebook. They should be sure to enter it in their table of contents. You may decide to distribute sticky notes so that students can flag this page. Use the model on the next page to guide your efforts.
Notice the column titled “Date Completed/# of Pages Read.” This column is a place for students to record, and receive credit for, the reading of texts that did not require a “cover-to-cover” experience. Be sure to point out that reading sections of several texts for specific purposes is not the same as skipping aimlessly from book to book to book. The former often indicates purposefulness and interest; the latter can indicate confusion or disengagement.
After students have set up the reading log—including proper headings, creating the grid, etc.—demonstrate how to make an entry.
Answer any questions students have about the log.
Remind students that the reading log is a tool to be used in conjunction with the “Goals” sheets. Students track their reading in the log and then use the log to evaluate their progress toward their goals.
If you plan to use student portfolios this year, consider introducing them at this time using some version of the information in the section that follows. Review Creating a Student Portfolio in advance to be sure you have thought through some of the important questions for portfolio work.
Unit Resources
Title: The Second Assignment: Writing About Satrapi’s Message
Title: The Third Assignment: Persepolis: Wrapping Up the Work
Title: The First Assignment: Retelling Borderlands/La Frontera
Title: The Second Assignment: Writing About Anzaldúa’s Arguments
Title: The Final Assignment: Revising a Borderlands Paper
Title: Grades 9 and 10 – Interpretive_Argument Rubric
Title: Grades 9 and 10 – Informational_Explanatory Rubric
Title: Scaffolds and Modifications: Descriptions and Use