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Section 3: Overview

Impact and Legacy

We will finish The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, continuing to analyze the author’s style, structure, and other literary techniques. We will pay close attention to how the author develops the central issues in the text and what readers can learn from the history of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell culture. Lastly, we will use a Socratic Seminar to exhibit and deepen our understanding of the text.

  • Lesson 1:

    We will begin by reviewing and discussing the Framing Questions for this unit. We then look at the overall organization of the timelines in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in order to make inferences about the author’s intent and purpose. Then, we begin reading Part 3, using text-specific questions to guide our learning.

  • Lesson 2:

    We will complete an activity on patients’ rights and complete a close-word study of the term immortal. We will also conduct a vocabulary review.

  • Lesson 3:

    We will write an analytical statement about author craft in Chapters 26–28 and then examine some of the central issues in the same chapters. After completing these activities, we will update our Author Craft Note-Taking Tool with our notes from these and previous lessons.

  • Lesson 4:

    We will continue our practice of writing analytical statements on the author craft, this time focusing on Chapters 29–30. We will also use the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to add to our study of the central issues in the text. We will end this lesson with a mentor sentence activity.

  • Lesson 5:

    We will create an analytical statement about the reading with two examples of textual support. We will do a close study of several key persons in the text and update our Author Craft Note-Taking Tool.

  • Lesson 6:

    We will diagram the structure of Chapter 33 in order to continue our study of author craft. We will then analyze the confrontation between two key persons by completing a representation chart. We will update our Author Craft Note-Taking Tool and complete a mentor sentence activity.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will complete a final analytical statement from the text, this time adding a closure statement and textual support. We will complete a close analysis of Chapter 38 and study Henrietta Lacks’ legacy and complete a final vocabulary review for the book.

  • Lesson 8:

    We will synthesize our notes about author craft and the issues raised in the text to prepare for the Section Diagnostic. We will also review the norms of a Socratic Seminar.

  • Lesson 9:

    We will engage in a Socratic Seminar.

  • Lesson 10:

    We will review the teacher’s feedback on our Section Diagnostic and will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 11:

    We will share the understanding we have gained through our independent reading and continue to read our texts.