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"The Circuit"

  • maiello0
  • Sep 11, 2017
  • 4 min read

Information about the text:

After dark in a Mexican border town, a father holds open a hole in a wire fence as his wife and two small boys crawl through. So begins life in the United States for many people every day. And so begins this collection of twelve autobiographical stories by Santa Clara University professor Francisco Jimenez, who at the age of four illegally crossed the border with his family in 1947. The Circuit, the story of young Panchito and his trumpet, is one of the most widely anthologized stories in Chicano literature. At long last, Jimenez offers more about the wise, sensitive little boy who has grown into a role model for subsequent generations of immigrants. These independent but intertwined stories follow the family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots and back again over a number of years. As it moves from one labor camp to the next, the little family of four grows into ten. Impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures. - https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/the-circuit-by-francisco-jimenez/

Essential Questions:

What did I learn about myself from this text?

How can reading literature help me empathize?

What role should the government play in supporting immigrants - both legal and illegal?

What role should the schools play in supporting immigrant children?

Standards:

RL.1 (Inferring)

6th Grade: Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

7th Grade: Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

8th Grade: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

RL.2 (Theme)

6th Grade: Determine a theme or 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.

7th Grade: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.

8th Grade: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

RL.3 (Storytelling)

6th Grade: Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.

7th Grade: Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how setting shapes the characters or plot).

8th Grade: Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

9th-10th Grades: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.​

Objectives:

- Follow complex plots, tracking multiple events and gathering information about many characters and their traits and relationships

- Notice how the writer reveals the underlying messages or the theme of a text (through a character, through plot and events)

- Provide evidence from the text or from personal experience to support written statements

- Utilize the BHH strategy to think deeply about a text

- Comment on the author's word choice and use of language to create subtle shades of meaning and to create the mood

- Bring knowledge from personal experiences to the interpretation of characters and events, particularly content and situations related to adolescents

- Express changes in ideas or perspectives across the reading (as events unfold) after reading a text

- Acquire new content and perspectives through reading both fiction and nonfiction texts about diverse cultures, times and places

- Use situations focusing on the life of adolescents to develop new perspectives on readers' own lives

- Infer traits, motivations, and changes through examining how the writer describes them, what they do, what they say and think, and what other characters say about them in texts with multiple complex characters

- infer characters' or subjects' thinking processes and struggles at key decision points in their lives in fiction or biography

- Infer the big ideas or themes of a text and discuss how they are applicable to people's lives today

Infer the meaning of symbols that the writers uses to convey and enhance meaning

- Identify significant events and tell how they are related to the problem of the story or solution

Activities:

Students will read this book in various ways - solo, with a partner, as a group. as a read aloud. They will be asked to interact with the text from various lenses, including the BHH framework above. Throughout the text we will do activities that help them synthesize and think deeply about the text. As a group we will keep a map of Francisco's journeys, as well as a timeline of events.

Assessments:

- Various written and orally presented activities throughout the text, with a focus on what makes good writing about reading.

- Observations during partner and small group time

- Personal reflections and connections

- Final activities


 
 
 

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Arbor View Elementary 

 

Glen Ellyn, Illinois

maiello@ccsd89.org

Tel: 630-469-5505

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