Lesson 4/Activity 1: Connecting Recent Events with Literature

“A people without history is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern of timeless moments” - T. S. Eliot^[1]

^[2]

This is a photo uploaded to Twitter during the aftermath of the shooting of Treyvon Martin,

 a teenaged African American boy who was walking in a gated community where

he was staying. A man named George Zimmerman assumed he was up to no good

 and dangerous, so he shot and killed Treyvon in 2012.

Benchmark:

11.4.10 By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature and other texts including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Learning Target:

I can compare current periodical articles with literature and validate both.

Essential Question:

How does studying complex texts benefit the reader versus reading simple texts?

You Will Need:

One or Two Days

Access to the internet

A Three-Column Table

Activity:

Please follow the six (6) steps in order.

STEP 1:        

Create a google doc and build a three (3) column table like this:

STEP 2:        

Read the following texts about racial confrontation past and present, fiction and nonfiction. Note the effects of articles that have more complex text and what is lost when a text is too simplified.

• Huck Finn - Start with the last paragraph on pg 28 and read to the middle of pg 29. This is part of Pap’s rant we studied before, about Pap meeting an African American man from Ohio.
• CNN - This is CNN’s take on what happened the night 17 year old Treyvon Martin was killed.
• New York Times - This article is another form of coverage of the Martin Shootings.

STEP 3:                  

Complete the table with errors in thinking by Pap and George Zimmerman.

STEP 4:          

Write a paragraph that expresses your thoughts about how assumptions of others can cause problems.

                Why do we see the bad in people in we don’t know?

                Why do we hesitate to get to know people?

                What happens when we see the bad in people and then act on it?

STEP 5:        

Post your paragraph to the discussion linked. Contribute to the discussion by responding to others.

                Respond to others in these possible ways:

• Add experiences/scenarios that support others’ ideas
• Challenge other posts with questions

STEP 6:        

Submit your doc with the table and paragraph included.