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Vocabulary Challenge - End of Year Project

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Vocabulary Challenge - End of Year Project

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"Inside Out" From The Circuit By, Francisco Jimenez

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"Inside Out" From The Circuit By, Francisco Jimenez

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Find 3 things that really stand out to you in each memoir: 1 word, 1 phrase, 1 sentence

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Find 3 things that really stand out to you in each memoir: 1 word, 1 phrase, 1 sentence

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I Ate There Once
https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1jG8nIRUROOKiVlddJOloIVFG90hZ8ty_kOpGg2CxHms/edit?usp=sharing

To the (2 Only) Men (Emrich’s) In My Life
https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1S67N6GQlbuNfTAS0pJ0SVSMH4qImrGewcmwSQkzgJVc/edit?usp=sharing

The Hiroshima Household
https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1wp4QHYosZDRypRHy0jf8HvyP9OFaXKwgvrF_mjujsFQ/edit?usp=sharing

Ryan Van Meter - First

https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1Vksh3uPhifi3NK01JlzOJdjGYS18X_OhcKX6ckcZz8w/edit?usp=sharing

The Dare
https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/17H_FmPu-gzLuo6YcelwxYC0YiD-j6oOB_ULY7QWTkz8/edit?usp=sharing

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Google Form - Getting to Know You and Your Learning Style Survey

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Google Form - Getting to Know You and Your Learning Style Survey

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https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdY5uMNwTDP7_vwy6NRYOUjcsV_e1OQKG0Zd9METQnWhtO3aA/viewform?usp=sf_link

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https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1OzBRx8HYFMpQlF6KL4-S9i3N7OoaHGEl9KbPbsaQN2I/edit?usp=sharing

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This reading comes from the resource Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.

Categories and labels can help us understand why we act the way we do. But sometimes those labels obscure what is really important about a person. Student Anthony Wright's difficulties in filling in the "little boxes" on an application form explains why reducing individuals to a category can be misleading.

Little Boxes. "How would you describe yourself? (please check one)" Some aren't as cordial. "Ethnic Group": These little boxes and circles bring up an issue for me that threatens my identity. Who am I? Unlike many others, I cannot answer that question easily when it comes to ethnicity. My mother is Hispanic (for those who consider South American as Hispanic) with an Asian father and my father is white with English and Irish roots. What does that make me? My identity already gets lost when my mother becomes a "Latino" instead of an "Ecuadorean." The cultures of Puerto Rico and Argentina are distinct, even though they are both "Hispanic." The same applies to White, Asian, Native American or Black, all vague terms trying to classify cultures that have sometimes greater disparities inside the classification than with other cultures. Yet I can't even be classified by these excessively broad terms.

My classification problem doesn't stop with my ethnicity. My father is a blue-collar worker, yet the technical work he does is much more than manual labor. My family, through our sweat, brains and savings, have managed to live comfortably. We no longer can really be classified as poor or lower class, but we really aren't middle class. Also, in my childhood my parents became disillusioned with the Catholic religion and stopped going to church. They gave me the option of going or not, but I was lazy and opted to stay in bed late Sunday mornings. Right now I don't even know if I am agnostic, atheist or something else, like transcendentalist. I just don't fit into categories nicely.

My biggest conflict of identity comes from another source: education. In the seventh grade, I was placed in a prep school from P.S. 61. The only similarity between the two institutions is that they are both in the Bronx, yet one is a block away from Charlotte Street, a nationally known symbol of urban decay, while the other is in one of the wealthiest sections of New York City. Prep for Prep, a program for disadvantaged students that starts in the fifth grade, worked with me for fourteen months, bringing me up to the private-school level academically and preparing me socially, but still, the transition was rough. Even in my senior year, I felt like I really did not fit in with the prep school culture. Yet I am totally separated from my neighborhood. My home happens to be situated there, and I might go to the corner bodega for milk and bananas, or walk to the subway station, but that is the extent of my contact with my neighborhood. I regret this, but when more than half the teenagers are high-school dropouts, and drugs are becoming a major industry there, there is no place for me. Prep for Prep was where I would "hang out" if not at my high school, and it took the place of my neighborhood and has been a valuable cushion. At high school, I was separate from the mainstream majority, but still an inextricable part of it, so I worked there and put my effort into making it a better place.

For a while, I desperately wanted to fit into a category in order to be accepted. Everywhere I went I felt out of place. When I go into the neighborhood restaurant to ask for arroz y pollo, my awkward Spanish and gringo accent makes the lady at the counter go in the back for someone who knows English, even though I think I know enough Spanish to survive a conversation. When I was little, and had short straight black hair, I appeared to be one of the few Asians in my school, and was tagged with the stereotype. I went to Ecuador to visit relatives, and they could not agree about whether I was Latin or gringo. When the little boxes appeared on the Achievements, I marked Hispanic even though I had doubts on the subject. At first sight, I can pass as white, and my last name will assure that I will not be persecuted as someone who is dark and has "Rodriguez" as his last name. I chose Hispanic because I most identified with it, because of my Puerto Rican neighborhood that I grew up in, and my mother, who has a big influence on me. However, many people would not consider me a Latino. And by putting just "Hispanic," "White," or "Asian," I felt as if I was neglecting a very essential side of me, and lying in the process. I now put "Other" in those little boxes, and when possible indicate exactly what I am.

I realize now the problem is not with me but with the identification system. The words Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American, describe more than one would expect. They describe genealogy, appearance and culture, all very distinct things, which most people associate as one; but there exists many exceptions, like the person who grows up in the Black inner city and adopts that culture, but is white by birth; or the Puerto Rican immigrant with blue eyes and blond hair. Religion can also obscure definitions, as is the case in Israel recently with the label "Jewish," which can be a race, culture or religion, and the definition of being Jewish by birth. The classifications especially get confused when appearance affects the culture, as with non-White cultures due to discrimination. Defining what is "culture;" and the specifics also confuses the issue. For example, it can be argued that almost every American, regardless of race (genealogy), is at least to some degree of the white culture, the "norm" in this country. With more culturally and racially mixed people like myself entering society, these classifications have to be addressed and defined.

My mixture helps me look to issues and ideas from more than one viewpoint, and I like that. Racial, economic, social and religious topics can be looked upon with a special type of objectivity that I feel is unique. I am not objective. I am subjective with more than one bias, so I can see both sides of an argument between a black militant and white conservative, a tenant and a landlord or a Protestant and a Catholic. I will usually side with the underdog, but it is necessary to understand opposing viewpoints in order to take a position. This diversity of self that I have, I enjoy, despite the confusion caused by a society so complex that sweeping generalizations are made. I cannot and don't deserve to be generalized or classified, just like anybody else. My background and position have affected me, but I dislike trying to be treated from that information. I am Anthony E. Wright, and the rest of the information about me should come from what I write, what I say and how I act. Nothing else.

1. Construct an identity chart for Anthony Wright. How does it help explain why he called his essay "Little Boxes"? Why does he find it so difficult to classify himself? When does a special designation become a box that limits a person?

2. Psychologist Deborah Tannen writes, "We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. It's a natural tendency, since we must see the world in patterns in order to make sense of it; we wouldn't be able to deal with the daily onslaught of people and objects if we couldn't predict a lot about them and feel that we know who and what they are. But this natural and useful ability to see patterns of similarity has unfortunate consequences. It is offensive to reduce an individual to a category, and it is also misleading.

3. Give examples of the ways that generalizing can be useful. Give examples of its "unfortunate consequences." How does Wright's essay support Tannen's observation?

4. What is Wright's dilemma? Do you or people you know share that dilemma? If so, how do you or they resolve it? Does the reverse of Wright's dilemma ever cause problems? That is, do people ever feel hurt because their membership in a group is not acknowledged?

5. How do Tannen's comments help explain why Wright concludes that "I cannot and don't deserve to be generalized or classified, just like anybody else"? Do you share his feelings?

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This reading comes from the resource Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior . Categories and labels can help us understand why we act the way we do. But sometimes those labels obscure what is really important about a person.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAg3uMlNyHA

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https://docs.google.com/a/sfds.net/document/d/1Ftjng51yi3zh3jFQwWgRa9VdsvE0sY2H-XbRDfKPcK8/edit?usp=sharing

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Theme Statement Demonstrate Understanding Wksht. (HW).

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Theme Statement Demonstrate Understanding Wksht. (HW).

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You have the choice of completing this worksheet or including the same information in a video

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Demonstrate Understanding Create a Theme Statement

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A literary agent discusses the contents of a quality memoir and how it differs from an autobiography or biography.

Memoirs are perennially popular with many new books coming out each year. The bestseller, Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir, not an autobiography or biography. But what is a memoir, anyway?
Memoir, autobiography, biography
A memoir is a special kind of autobiography, usually involving a public portion of the author's life as it relates to a person, historic event, or thing. The text is about the personal knowledge and/or experiences of the author.

In contrast, an autobiography covers the author's entire life to the present, and is expected to include details about his or her public and private life. A biography is someone's life story written by another person.
Examples of memoirs
Elie Wiesel's Night relates true stories of fellow concentration camp sufferers during the Holocaust of WWII based on the author's shared experiences with them. He limits our glimpses of his own ordeals, including them reluctantly as a vehicle to chronicle the others' suffering, perhaps due to survivor's guilt.

Irene Spencer's Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamists's Wife is about polygamy from the author's personal experience of it. Now in a monogamous marriage, which was beyond the topic of this memoir, Spencer did not give us the details of her life outside of polygamy.

Jung Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is the author's memoir recounting the terrible events in twentieth century China by telling us how she, her mother, and her grandmother survived them. It does not include anything about Chang's life since 1978, when she moved to England.
To sample many memoirs in one book:
Eve Claxton's The World's Best Memoir Writing: The Literature of Life from St. Augustine to Nelson Mandela is an anthology of memoir excerpts from people who have changed the world.
Memoir: Fact or fiction?
Obviously, a memoir should be true. The author should not alter the truth in telling his or her story. In fact, Elie Wiesel checked the text and made minor corrections in his book, Night, before it was published in the US to make it as truthful as possible.

Memories are faulty, so a little leeway is given to authors of memoirs, but they are expected to be honest and to check their facts for accuracy. Creating fiction and passing it off as nonfiction, as apparently was done by James Frey in his controversial A Million Little Pieces, is completely unacceptable.
Memoir writing techniques
A memoir is written in first person from the author's point of view.

It is narrative nonfiction written in story form like fiction. Dialogue can be included, but since few people can remember precisely every word spoken, the dialogue is not literally true; instead the author attempts to recreate it as accurately as possible. For this reason, some memoirs, like Wild Swans, tell the story without dialogue.

The memoir author should "think small" and make a series of "reducing decisions," says William Zinsser, author of the perennially popular book, On Writing Well, which includes a new chapter about writing memoirs in the latest edition.
Each memoir has a particular theme or focus
A memoir does not contain everything from this particular slice of the author's life, but rather, events are selected and examined for meaning relative to the purpose of the book.

The author has questioned what happened and come to some kind of new understanding or lesson learned by it. The author shows us how he or she was affected by this experience, how it has profoundly changed the way he sees the world.

And by extension, reading the book will change the way the reader sees the world.
Copyright 2006-2007 by Barbara Doyen. All rights reserved.

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What is a Memoir? What Makes a Memoir Different from an Autobiography or Biography?

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Memoirs are perennially popular with many new books coming out each year. The bestseller, Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir, not an autobiography or biography. But what is a memoir, anyway? Memoir, autobiography, biography A memoir is a special kind of autobiography, usually involving a public portion of the author's life as it relates to a person, historic event, or thing.

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What is a Memoir? Memoir Writing Interview Part 1
What is a memoir? Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler discuss this question in Part One of our conversation about memoir writing. Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler are memoirists, teachers of memoir writing, and founders of the websiteWomensmemoirs.com. Their collective memoir, Rosie's Daughters: The "First Woman To" Generation Tells Its Story, won an IPPY National Book Award in 2008.
A Conversation with Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett: What is a Memoir?
Matilda:
First of all, I would like to make a distinction between memoir and autobiography, because everyone gets a little confused on that. They really mean two quite different things, yet they are sometimes used interchangeably and it makes it really confusing.

An autobiography is the story of your life to date. It is usually chronologically based, and it starts with when you are young and all the things that happened to you along the way in your life.

An autobiography is-and one of the ways I think about that is as if it was a whole pie --it's everything. But when you think about a memoir, it's really a slice of your life. It could be just one time period, and it could be just one aspect of your life. For instance if you have diabetes, it might go across multiple years, and you might look at the diagnosis and how you manage. You might decide, I am not talking about the other things that happened to me. I am not talking about my relationships. I am not talking about my education. I am talking about living with diabetes. And then that would be the focus. So it isn't a matter of years, it's really a matter of scope. That then becomes the way that you distinguish the two of them.

Now, having said that, you will sometimes find a memoir with a subtitle like "My Autobiography." But it really is a memoir because it is a focused part of your life, or one type of experience that you've had in your life, or a turning point in your life -- all of those kinds of things. In other words, you don't really have to account for all of your life. And that's what begins to make memoir this flowering genre right now, because it is not an overwhelming thing to do. You don't really have to account for everything that has happened to you.

A memoir really is an opportunity to reflect -- to look inside yourself and to say, "It's not just all these external things that have happened to me. It's really, how has something changed me? Why am I the person I am today? What were the big turning points in my life? What has caused me to have the outlook I have?"

That's really a distinction between autobiography and memoir that I think is an important one. Because then you can begin to work with little vignettes and just say "Oh, I was thinking -- oh, that was really important." Then you could just write about that. You don't have to worry about having a full outline on day one. You don't have to worry that you've got it, you know exactly what you are going to write about and you then proceed to write. Because when we're dealing with memories-memories are really special, and you may always be able to apply the logic and say, "Oh, but today I have to write about A." And maybe that isn't what you really want to write about.

Sometimes in my class, someone will walk in and she'll say, "You know, I was going to write about such and such, and look what came out!" Then she will read what she wrote and it won't have anything to do with that. That's because memories are this precious, dear part of us, and as we get into memory, we then remember more things. In classes, I've had people say, "I woke up in the middle of the night and I remembered a song that I sang with my husband on our honeymoon 42 years ago, and I had completely forgotten the song." So, when we work with memory, it actually helps to bring up more memories. And so it is a process you have to be open to.

Kendra: I would add a couple of things. Whereas a person would typically write her autobiography late in her life and write it one time, memoirs are something that we can write many of, and you can write them at any time. If you have had something very interesting happen to you or devastating, or whatever it might be -- something significant at a young age -- and you want to write, you could write a memoir at fourteen or sixteen, and it would be valid, whereas, you couldn't write an autobiography at that age.

Read more on "What is a memoir?" in Part Two of our conversation about memoir writing with Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler.

What is a Memoir - Next Steps

Go to Part 2 of this conversation about writing a memoir.

Read "smell and memory" entries in our memoir writing competition

Read our interview with author Heather Sellers on memoir writing
Return from What is a Memoir to the main memoir writing page

<< BACK from What is a Memoir to Creative Writing Now Home

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What is a memoir? Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler discuss this question in Part One of our conversation about memoir writing. Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler are memoirists, teachers of memoir writing, and founders of the websiteWomensmemoirs.com. Their collective memoir, Rosie's Daughters: The "First Woman To" Generation Tells Its Story, won an IPPY National Book Award in 2008.

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Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."

In this spirit, Smith Magazine invited writers "famous and obscure" to distill their own life stories into exactly six words. It All Changed in an Instant is the fourth collection of very, very brief life stories from Smith. The tiny memoirs are sometimes sad, often funny - and always concise.

It All Changed in an Instant is full of well-known names - from activist Gloria Steinem ("Life is one big editorial meeting"), to author Frank McCourt ("The miserable childhood leads to royalties"), to actress Molly Ringwald ("Acting is not all I am").

Larry Smith, founding editor of Smith, and Rachel Fershleiser, Smith's memoir editor, talk to NPR's Rebecca Roberts about the fun and the challenge of capturing real-life stories in six little words.

Smith's six-word memoir? "Now I obsessively count the words." And Fershleiser's: "Bookstore to book tour in seconds."

Can you write your autobiography in one sentence? Share your six-word memoir.

More six-word memoirs from It All Changed in an Instant:

Found on Craigslist: table, apartment, fiance.
Becki Lee

Alzheimer's: meeting new people every day.
Phil Skversky

Met wife at her bachelorette party.
Eddie Matz

Family portrait: everyone smiles but me.
Ian Baaske

Hotel sex still rocks over fifty.
Marcella Oleksiuk

I picked passion. Now I'm poor.
Kathleen E. Whitlock

Normal person becomes psychotic on Twitter.
Robin Slick

Yale at 16, downhill from there.
Anita Kawatra

Overworked and underpaid,
Oversexed and underlaid.
Victoria Hansen

After cancer, I became a semicolon.
Anthony R. Cardno

At least I never voted Republican.
Tony Kushner

Full circle: morgue tech becomes obstetrician.
Andrea Skorenki

So would you believe me anyway?
James Frey
Excerpted from It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure from Smith magazine, edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith. Copyright 2010. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Harper Perennial.

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Can You Tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words?

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Once asked to write a full story in six words, legend has it that novelist Ernest Hemingway responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." In this spirit, Smith Magazine invited writers "famous and obscure" to distill their own life stories into a single sentence.

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Character Relationships

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/19iwxhDkvqqE9L6s-SG4L78TxlX6XvrMUlBgdnARgINU/edit?usp=sharing

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Mentor Text - great example Mountain/Sea

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Mentor Text - great example Mountain/Sea

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Papa Who Wakes up Tired in the Dark_Cisneros

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Doing something completely different! I hope to do more in the future. I actually put all this together in about 5 hours.

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When these words first played over the stereo, we knew we were in for one hell of a song. Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down our list for the Top 10 Best Opening Lyrics or Opening Song Lyrics.

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A great speech opening line gets us curious and sets the direction for a powerful speech. Here are some of my favourite opening lines from TED talks - and

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21 of the Best Opening Lines in Children's Books - We Are Teachers

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The very first sentence of a story can be extremely powerful. It can stick with you for days, weeks, even years. As you teach writing and journaling in your own classroom, we pulled together some of the most memorable, fun, creative, and best opening lines books for children and teens have to offer.

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Great Example multiple stories one understory

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Great Example multiple stories one understory

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Great Example Multiple Stories One Understory

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Great Example Multiple Stories One Understory

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https://soundcloud.com/sydthekid0302/sets/to-kill-a-mockingbird-ch-1-31

http://www.raio.org/TKM/audiobook.html

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TED TALK: We Need to Talk about an Injustice (Video)

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TED TALK: We Need to Talk about an Injustice (Video)

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Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

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In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives.

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We Need to Talk About an Injustice - Handout (Text Format)

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We Need to Talk About an Injustice - Handout (Text Format)

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7.3 We Need to Talk about Injustice Bryan Stevenson TED talk

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A Conversation with Claude Steele

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[JONATHON LYKES] I remember when I felt like I had no voice. Before I faced history, before college was a choice. It was my freshman year of high school when I took my first Facing History course. They taught me about identity, community and choosing to participate. Now I'm involved in my community because I chose to participate. Because I used to feel like my words were like the crooked figures hidden under the barcodes that are pasted on the beaten backs of books that I was never supposed to read.

My words, numbered. Because I used to wonder, how do they see me, how do I see them. For I noticed that there's this thing called perception that gives people the opportunity for exception or on the flip side, to be in the circle of rejection, or different type of sections in groups of cliques making fun of that person and talking bad about this person. So I ask you, what is your outlook on things? All these different stereotypes and all types of legal rights being violated because you look this way and you act that way and you're telling me it's OK to give a blind eye to the less fortunate simply because they're beneath you. Test.

[CLAUDE STEELE] You know, I often say that people experience stereotype threat several times a day. And the reason is that we have a lot of identities. Our gender, our race, our age. And about each one of those identities that I mentioned, there are negative stereotypes. And when people are in a situation for which a negative stereotype about one of their identities is relevant to the situation, relevant to what they're doing, they know they could be possibly judged or treated in terms of that stereotype. They don't know whether they are or not, but they know they could be.

And if the situation is important, that prospect starts to threaten them and upset them and distract them and can affect performance right there in the situation. And so you could find yourself kind of adjusting and deflecting, doing things that would deflect being seen by the stereotype. And it can affect their willingness or their interest in staying in that area of life where that kind of stereotype is relevant.

[JONATHON LYKES] Test. You, in a dark suburban alley alone see a Black man, looks like he's far away from home. Fear runs down your spine and your thoughts roam as you say in your mind, this little Black boy is up to no good and should be picked up by the police. But would you believe that that boy was me and what they didn't see was I was coming home from youth group. So tell me why the mode of pre-determined thought towards me. I'm not in that percentile. We're trying to be all that we can be. And they still stone me with their misconceptions about Black men.

They tend to understand and assume I'm into to misconjugated verbs, oversized pants, and hip hop.

[SONJA SOHN] The year the schools were integrated I was bussed uptown 20 miles. I was in a school with white kids. And on the first day of school they sectioned us all off and they called out groups one, two, three, and four and you went and stood in lines. And I'm seeing all the white kids in one line. And I knew that I had tested pretty high on tests before because I used to study by myself in my school the year before.

And so I knew what line I was going in. And I went into that line filled with the white kids. And that year things changed for me. I lost a lot of confidence. And I was under stereotype threat. I was scared to raise my hand because I couldn't be wrong. Not the Black girl who lived downtown.

[CLAUDE STEELE] I'm a social psychologist and experimentalist and so we've done experiments to test whether or not stereotype threat can have effect on something that we tend to think of as pretty hard-wired like your performance on a cognitive exam or a standardized test. So one simple experiment was to bring women and men into the laboratory one at a time and give them a very difficult math test, a math test that we knew would cause frustration.

And even though everything was the same for the men and for the woman-- the room, the items on the test, the experimenter-- for men, as they went along doing the test and experienced frustration, they could worry that they're not as good at math as they maybe thought they were. But they wouldn't be worried that they were confirming some group-based limitation of ability. But for women, in the same situation, as they start to experience frustration, some part of their brain might worry, am I confirming the stereotype about women having limited math ability? Is that what's going on here?

And that worry, since these are women who we-- women and men-- who we selected for being very committed to math and very good at it, that worry for that kind of person can be upsetting and distracting and can interfere with their performance right there in the testing situation. And that's exactly what happened. Women did considerably worse than the men. However, and here's the good news, we eventually came up with an idea that would take stereotype threat out of that situation.

We simply told them the following: Look, you may have heard that women are not as good at difficult standardized tests. But that's not true for this particular standardized test. The test that you're taking today is a test on which women always do as well as men. So the subtext of that little statement is, look, the frustration you're having on this test has nothing to do with your being a woman. Now we've taken this extra pressure that women might have in this situation out of the situation. They're no longer under the pressure of confirming or being seen to confirm something, some limitation, that's out there in the stereotypes of our society about women lacking math ability.

And if that's what's been depressing their performance earlier, now their performance should go up to match that of equally skilled men. And that is exactly what happened. With that little sentence, women's performance matched that of men.

So some forms of this threat are pretty minor and almost humorful, and other forms of this threat are really poignant. One thing to say in a Facing History context is that stereotypes is one way by which history affects present life, because stereotypes are built up over the history of a society. And they can have an impact on people's functioning in the immediate, present situations, and are big factors in the way our society functions. Who goes into what kinds of fields. Who enjoys what kinds of work. These things are driven, in big part, by these by these kinds of threats.

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How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do

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Claude Steele describes the idea and effects of stereotype threat in our daily lives.

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Questions to guide note-taking on Stereotype Threat

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Questions to guide note-taking on Stereotype Threat

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KWL Great Depression, Dust Bowl, Jim Crowe

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The Great Depression
http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression
The Dust Bowl
http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl
Jim Crowe/Segregation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/

http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/jim-crow.html

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Understanding the systems of racial separation and institutionalized segregation that are known as Jim Crow is essential for understanding the setting of . In this activity, watch the video "Understanding Jim Crow" and use connection questions to better grasp the time and setting of To Kill A Mockingbird.

This is Handout 3.2 from Teaching Mockingbird. It has been renamed.

Use the following questions to guide your note-taking and reflection on the video "Understanding Jim Crow (Setting the Setting)".

1. David Cunningham describes Jim Crow segregation as both a system of laws and a system of customs. What is the difference between laws and customs? Which are more difficult to change?

2. Why did Mississippi and Alabama have fewer formal Jim Crow laws than other states in the South?

3. In what ways did black and white lives overlap in Alabama in the 1930s? In what ways were they completely separated?

4. What was the effect of the Depression on the relationships between whites and blacks in the Jim Crow South? Why?

5. What were some of the unwritten rules of segregation? What were some of the complications around those rules?

6. How were gender roles different between white and black Americans?

7. What were the consequences of questioning Jim Crow? How do you think they were different for blacks and whites?

8. How did this video help shed light on written and unwritten rules of life in Maycomb? What characters, choices, and events in the book so far did this video help you better understand?

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Understanding the systems of racial separation and institutionalized segregation that are known as Jim Crow is essential for understanding the setting of . In this activity, watch the video "Understanding Jim Crow" and use connection questions to better grasp the time and setting of To Kill A Mockingbird.

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Listen to three interviews with Studs Terkel

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Literary critic Wayne C. Booth writes that the plots of great stories "are built out of the characters' efforts to face moral choices. In tracing those efforts, we readers stretch our own capacities for thinking about how life should be lived." In order to understand the moral choices depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird, we must first look at both the identities of those making moral choices and the context in which they are made. In other words, we must start by examining character and setting.

Just as character includes more than surface traits, setting goes well beyond simply establishing the time and place of the novel. Meaningfully understanding the setting of To Kill A Mockingbird requires understanding the moral universe in which the story takes place. In other words, it requires having a sense of the "rules, constraints, possibilities, potential conflicts and possible consequences" that affect the choices the characters make.

This lesson explores the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird in order to understand the moral choices that characters make in the novel. You'll find activities that use our original video about the Jim Crow South, Studs Terkel radio clips offering first-hand accounts of the Great Depression, and readings from Teaching Mockingbird.

1. Looking at race and segregation in Alabama during the Jim Crow Era

Read Excerpt: Atticus explaining to Scout why he must take the Robinson case seriously (Chapter 9)

How does Atticus explain his choice? Why is there so much tension in Maycomb (and in the Finch household) about this choice?

Watch the video: "Understanding Jim Crow"

How does this video deepen our understanding of the "moral universe" in which Atticus must make choices about his defense of Tom Robinson? What does this video help us understand about the consequences of his choice?

2. Looking at class in a small southern town in the 1930s
Read Excerpt: Atticus describes the Ewells to Scout (Chapter 3)
What does this passage tell us about the "moral universe" of Maycomb? Who is part of the "common folk" and who isn't?

Listen to Studs Terkel first-hand accounts:

How do these perspectives change or deepen our understanding of the Ewells' predicament? How do they affect our understanding of Atticus's attitude toward the Ewells?

Read text excerpt: "Being Well Born" from New Civic Biology by George William Hunter

3. Exploring gender expectations in Maycomb
Read Excerpt: Aunt Alexandra describing what it means to be a lady (Chapter 9)
What is Aunt Alexandra's vision for what is "lady-like"? What metaphor does Alexandra use to describe the role that Scout should play in her father's life because she is a girl? How does her repetition of the metaphor help establish her tone and indicate her feelings about Alexandra's attempt to influence her?

Read text excerpt: "The Southern Lady and Belle" from The Companion to Southern Literature by Joseph Flora and Lucinda MacKethan

How does the description of this historical social type help us understand Aunt Alexandra's perspective? What does it suggest about both the pressures on Scout and her choices in response to those pressures?

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Maycomb's Ways: Setting as Moral Universe

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Literary critic Wayne C. Booth writes that the plots of great stories "are built out of the characters' efforts to face moral choices. In tracing those efforts, we readers stretch our own capacities for thinking about how life should be lived."

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Chapter Tours are Great Questions to Guide your Reader Responses

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Chapter Tours are Great Questions to Guide your Reader Responses

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Guide to Essay Writing (structure and examples

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Guide to Essay Writing (structure and examples

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Perfecting the skill of writing topic sentences is essential to successful essay writing. A topic sentence usually comes at the beginning of a paragraph and lets your reader know what to expect from each paragraph. Think of it as the...

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Research requires us to scrutinize information and assess its credibility. Accordingly, when we think about various phenomena, we examine empirical data and craft detailed explanations justifying our interpretations. An essential component of constructing our research narratives is providing supporting evidence and examples.

The type of proof we provide can either bolster our claims or leave readers confused or skeptical of our analysis. Therefore, it's crucial that we use appropriate, logical phrases that guide readers clearly from one idea to the next. In this article, we discuss situations in which evidence and examples should be used and catalog effective language you can use to support your arguments, examples included.

When to introduce evidence and examples

Evidence and examples create the foundation upon which your claims can stand firm. Without proof, your arguments lack credibility and teeth. However, laundry listing evidence is as bad as failing to provide any materials or information that can substantiate your conclusions. Therefore, when you introduce examples, make sure to judiciously provide evidence when needed and use phrases that will appropriately and clearly explain how the proof supports your argument.

You should introduce and link your arguments to evidence when you

state information that is not "common knowledge";

draw conclusions, make inferences, or suggest implications based on specific data;

need to clarify a prior statement, and it would be more effectively done with an illustration;

need to identify representative examples of a category;

desire to distinguish concepts; and

emphasize a point by highlighting a specific situation.

Introductory phrases to use and their contexts

To assist you with effectively supporting your statements, we have organized the introductory phrases below according to their function. This list is not exhaustive but will provide you with ideas of the types of phrases you can use.

Purpose Introductory Phrase Example

stating information that is not "common knowledge"

[use relevant style guide's in-text citation format]

As [Author] indicated/ stated/ discovered

According to [Author],

As Smith indicated in a 2010 study . . .

According to Marks and Peters . . .

drawing conclusions, making inferences, or suggesting implications based on specific data

clarifying a prior statement

for example

for instance

by way of illustration

as an example

to clarify

to explain further

namely

to be specific

that is,

in other words,

This occurrence is rare. For example, only one in twenty . . .

It is unlikely that current population growth rates are sustainable. For instance, several major coastal cities are already suffering from . . .

By way of illustration, less than 20% of new matriculants feel prepared for . . .

As an example, when a country faces economic recession, polls indicate that over 80% of the population supports . . .

To clarify, not all government-funded facilities provide . . .

To explain further, large doses of Agent O can trigger . . .

Millennials prefer flexible work conditions, namely the ability to work remotely.

To be specific, bull markets can . . .

That is, significant and sudden drops in temperature can . . .

In other words, short bursts of high-intensity ultrasound can . . .

identifying representative examples of a category

*NOTE: "such as" and "like" have two different uses. "Such as" introduces a specific example that is part of a category. "Like" suggests the listed items are similar to, but not included in, the topic discussed.

distinguishing concepts

emphasizing a point by highlighting a specific situation

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alternative phrases to introduce examples

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41 Effective Phrases to Introduce Evidence & Examples | Wordvice

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Research requires us to scrutinize information and assess its credibility. Accordingly, when we think about various phenomena, we examine empirical data and craft detailed explanations justifying our interpretations. An essential component of constructing our research narratives is providing supporting evidence and examples.

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Thesis Sentence vs. Topic Sentence by Shmoop

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In this lesson you will learn the differences between topic sentences and thesis statements.

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This is the second part of Anna Deavere Smith's play, "Fires in the Mirror." Smith's dramatic technique is highly unusual. She interviews hundreds of citizens and community leaders, recording their words and then composing the play as a series of fragments from these interviews.

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This is the third part of Anna Deavere Smith's play, "Fires in the Mirror." Smith's dramatic technique is highly unusual. She interviews hundreds of citizens and community leaders, recording their words and then composing the play as a series of fragments from these interviews.

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This is the fourth part of Anna Deavere Smith's play, "Fires in the Mirror." Smith's dramatic technique is highly unusual. She interviews hundreds of citizens and community leaders, recording their words and then composing the play as a series of fragments from these interviews.

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This is the fifth part of Anna Deavere Smith's play, "Fires in the Mirror." Smith's dramatic technique is highly unusual. She interviews hundreds of citizens and community leaders, recording their words and then composing the play as a series of fragments from these interviews.

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This is the final part of Anna Deavere Smith's play, "Fires in the Mirror." Smith's dramatic technique is highly usual. She interviews hundreds of citizens and community leaders, recording their words and then composing the play as a series of fragments from these interviews.