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Section 1: Overview

Author’s Craft

We will read Part 1 of the anchor text for this unit: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. We will study and analyze the author’s writing techniques and learn how she balances the stories of Henrietta Lacks and her family with the research, development, and complexities of the HeLa cell culture. To show what we have learned, we will write a multiparagraph response that analyzes Skloot’s authorial choices and the effect they have on the reader’s understanding of the complex story.

  • Lesson 1:

    We begin this unit by previewing the Framing Questions and the Culminating Task. We will take our first look at the anchor text for this unit, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, by reading “A Few Words about This Book” and analyzing the first paragraph.

  • Lesson 2:

    We will examine the epigraph and the prologue to understand how the author introduces key ideas and persons.

  • Lesson 3:

    We will complete a sentence-level study of “Deborah’s Voice,” then synthesize our notes in the Author Craft Note-Taking Tool. We will analyze several paragraphs in Chapter 1 and complete a vocabulary activity.

  • Lesson 4:

    We will interact meaningfully with the vocabulary words we wrote down for homework, learn and apply terms related to diction, complete a sentence analysis of Chapter 2, and engage in our first mentor sentence activity.

  • Lesson 5:

    We will analyze the timeline of the text, learn and apply key terms related to the structure of a text, and complete a close study of the representation of the key person in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

  • Lesson 6:

    We will complete an activity on vocabulary and examine how Rebecca Skloot uses imagery in the text. We will also analyze Skloot’s representation of herself in the text and add our analysis to our Author Craft Note-Taking Tool.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will examine the author’s use of figurative language and structure in the text. We will also analyze the use of the phrase benevolent deception in the text and review vocabulary from Chapters 6–8.

  • Lesson 8:

    We will analyze Rebecca Skloot’s structure, her representation of key persons, and how she creates mood in the text. We will complete a mentor sentence exercise and prepare for our response to the Section Diagnostic.

  • Lesson 9:

    Using our notes from the previous lessons, we will demonstrate our understanding of Rebecca Skloot’s writing techniques and their effect by composing a response to the Section 1 Diagnostic prompt.

  • Lesson 10:

    We will review feedback on the Section Diagnostic. We will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 11:

    We will commence an Independent Reading Program in which we choose texts to read independently as we progress through the unit. We will learn how to choose texts, what activities we may complete, about the final task, and about any materials we will use as we read our independent reading texts. We will begin by reading our texts, using tools to help us take notes and analyze important textual elements.