Barbed Wire Baseball written by Marissa Moss, Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

Barbed Wire Baseball
Author Marissa Moss, Illustrator Yuko Shimizu
800L

                This is a retelling of the experience of Kenichi Zenimura during the Japanese Internment during World War II in the southwest of the United States. This story covers when Zeni was young, how he aspired to play baseball, how he achieved his goals as an adult, and lastly how he kept his dream of baseball alive for his sons and himself while his family was imprisoned within the internment camp.

Learning Activity:
After reading through the story, the student will look over a preselected set of images from Ansel Adams’ collection of photographs from the Manzanar Relocation Center in 1943. These images will be scenes of the baseball games, children doing activities, and families together outdoors. From these images, the student will compare the images from the book to what the real photographs were like. The student will write about what is similar and what is different between the two depictions of the events at the Japanese Internment camps.

Standards:
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.4.1 - Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.4.7 - Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.

Goal:
The student will write a compare and contrast about the real images from the historic event of the book with the drawn illustrations and fictionalized story.

Objective:
Cognitive –
                The student will observe the drawn imagery and find similarities between the illustrations and the photographs of the events.
                The student will then write about what is different between the two images.

Outcome:
The student will listen to the book, look through the selected historical photographs about the topic of the book, compare and contrast the book to the real-life images. The student will write about the differences between the two.

Inside Out and Back Again written by Thanhha Lai

Inside Out and Back Again
Thanhha Lai
800L

            This book is a series of short poems, each one written as a diary entry, by a 10-year-old girl as she becomes a refugee from Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Ha moves to the United States with her family and her poems reflect her viewpoint of leaving her homeland and going to a new and strange culture. She writes about her family, regular kid complaints about education, her brothers, bullying, and all with a backdrop of the Vietnam War events (protests and racism) that surround her in Alabama.

John Newbery Medal – 2012
National Book Award for Young People’s Literature – 2011

Learning Activity:
The students will read through the text and will select three days out of the diary entries. The student will look over what takes place on that day with Ha and her family and explain how events from entry 1 effect events from the next 2 entries and entry 2 leading to 3. The student will present their findings of the three entries in front of the class, explaining what happened and how Ha reacted to it.

Standards:
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.5.3 - Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.5.5 - Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

Goal:
The student will compare three diary entries for their connectedness throughout the story.

Objective:
Cognitive -
            The student will read Inside Out and Back Again and select three diary entries throughout the whole of the text.
            The student will identify plot elements, character descriptions or story progress and then see how those aspects of the 1^st entry lead into the events of the 2^nd, and the 2^nd entry leads into the 3^rd.
            The student will read their findings on these diary entry days to the class, describing how the events are interconnected and how each character in those entries changes over the three chapters.

Outcome:
The student will learn how the story moves across the diary entries within a non-prose format. The student will identify how the events of one day cause the events of the subsequent days.

Selling Tool:

Book Review -

Inside Out and Back Again
Thanhha Lai
Harper, 2017.
288 pages

            The book Inside Out and Back Again written by Thanhha Lai is a series of poems told through the perspective of a ten year old girl during the Vietnam War as she must move from Shanghai to Alabama to flee the conflict. The poems are short and expressive of how the main character, Ha, feels about her daily life with her family and in the transition of moving to a new country. The story is for children 8 to 12 years old and can be incorporated into a poetry lesson plan or one focusing on history about the Vietnam War.

            The story includes a backdrop of the serious issues Ha’s family faces as they immigrate to the United States, racism and bullying. But it also includes aspects of what she experienced in the war itself while she was still in Vietnam. The story takes place during the war, the actual war extended from 1955 to 1975 and when Ha’s family moved to Alabama it was during the Civil Rights movement, 1954 to 1968. That region of the country was in a lot of conflict about race and outside of the difficulties of being a refugee from a war they had to face the backlash from their new neighbors who didn’t want any change to their regular way of life.

            The story describes Ha’s travels as she leaves her home forever, how she feels to lose everything but her family, and how difficult it is to understand why it’s all happening. As the diary entries are told through poems, it makes it easy to interpret in multiple ways for students. While Ha may be writing how her brothers tease her, it’s the mention in her poem of the other children that really hurts her. The book makes good use of emotive language, she describes what happens in brief language but still can tell what is going on in her life. I found the story to be more about racism and bullying than about being a refugee. If the story had focused more on the background, the time Ha was in Shanghai with her family before fleeing, it would pull more history into the story. Overall, it’s a good story to introduce to 3rd to 5th graders when discussing this time period in American history. The difference in perspective, told as through someone their own age, provides a different story than if it was from an adult about the same topic. This might make the content more accessible to students.

The Halloween Tree: A Graphic and Learning Activity

By: Charlene V. Martoni

Title: The Halloween Tree

Author: Ray Bradbury

Genre: Fantasy, horror, science fiction
Age Range: 8-12
Grade Level: 3-6
Lexile Measure: 800L

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SLIDESHOW 😀

CLICK HERE FOR THE LEARNING ACTIVITY OUTLINE


SELLING TOOL: Graphic

Inside out and back again, by Thanhha Lai

Lai, Thanhha. Inside out and back again. New York: Harper Collins, 2017.
Lexile Level: 800L
Awards: Newbery Honor, 2012; National Book Award for Young People's Literature, 2011

Learning Activity:
Target Age: Grade 5
This novel in verse is told from the perspective of Ha, who is travelling to America after her city Saigon, falls under siege during the war in Viet Nam. Ha has her share of troubles, but for the most part, is willing to move to America.

Brother Quang says this about moving:

"How can we scramble away
like rats,
without honor, without dignity,
when everyone must help
rebuild the country?"
(Lai, p. 44)

In groups of two, write a dialog between Ha and Brother Quang talking about their mother's decision to move the family to America. After peer revision, you will perform your dialog with your partner.

Learning Standard:
Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text

Learning Goal:
Students will discover interpersonal relationship dynamics between characters in the text.

Learning Outcome:
Students will understand the interpersonal relationship dynamic between brother and sister in Inside out and back again.

Learning Objective:
Students will write and perform a dialog from the perspectives of Sister Ha and Brother Quang from the novel, Inside out and back again.

Captain Underpants and the sensational saga of Sir Stinks-a-lot: the epic twelfth novel, by Dav Pilkey

Pilkey, Dav. Captain Underpants and the sensational saga of Sir Stinks-a-lot: the epic twelfth novel. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2015.


Lexile Level: 800L

Booktalk


Learning Activity:

While there are some parts of this epic novel that are depicted in graphic novel form, much of it is written in paragraph form. Have the children work in groups to storyboard their favorite chapter from the book. They can verbally recount the story in front of the class. They can express it through storyboard format (8 frames maximum). They can also act out the chapter (which will be the most fun).

Learning Standard:

SL. 3.4 Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

Learning Goals:

Children will tell the story of their favorite chapter of Captain Underpants.

Learning Objectives:

Children will recount the sequence of events in their favorite chapter of Captain Underpants in a clear and understandable fashion so that the audience can follow their story.

Learning Outcomes:

Children will convey their chapter by oral presentation.