Lesson 5

We will share and discuss what we learned about the three focus figures in The Warmth of Other Suns, focusing on the details of their experiences and the push-and-pull factors driving them to consider leaving the South. We will also read and discuss additional sections of Part 2 to add to our understanding of how Wilkerson uses structure to share this period in our history.

Lesson Goals

Can I use connections among details, elements, and effects to make logical deductions about Wilkerson’s perspective, purpose, and meaning in The Warmth of Other Suns?
Can I revisit, refine, and revise my understanding, knowledge, and work based on discussions with others and feedback and review by myself and others?

Texts

Core

- The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson, Vintage Books, 2010

Materials

Tools

Reference Guides

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Discuss

In this jigsaw discussion, we will share our responses to our first jigsaw reading with our home groups, using and completing the Jigsaw Note-Taking Tool.

Step 1

Follow your teacher’s directions about how to move from your expert groups into your home groups.

Experts A, B, and C share learning about their assigned person (Ida, George, and Robert) with their home groups, using the following guiding questions on the Jigsaw Note-Taking Tool to structure the sharing:

Life Prior to Migration: What do you learn about each person’s life prior to their departure from the South? What questions do you have?
Push-and-Pull Factors Influencing the Decision to Leave: What do you learn about the push-and-pull factors influencing each person’s decision? What questions do you have?
Immediate Impacts of Migration: What do you learn about the immediate impact of each person’s migration and about their life away from the South? What questions do you have?
Long-Term Impacts of Migration: What do you learn about the long-term impact of each person’s migration? What questions do you have?

As you share, remember that you might not have content to share for all of the guiding questions during every jigsaw discussion.

As the other experts share, take notes on your Jigsaw Note-Taking Tool and ask questions to help support your understanding of each assigned person.

Step 2

After all experts have taught their home groups about their assigned focus figure, discuss the following question:

What similarities and differences do you notice among Ida’s, George’s, and Robert’s experiences and the narratives Wilkerson creates for each of them?

Activity 2: Discuss – Write

By writing claims, we will begin to synthesize our understanding of the push-and-pull factors influencing each focus figure’s decision to leave the south.

Step 1

The Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool supports and guides a process for developing a claim from textual evidence; it can also help you explain how an existing claim is derived from, and supported by, evidence. Using the tool begins with a guiding question that calls for you to reach a conclusion and communicate a claim, which might be factual, analytical, comparative, or evaluative in nature. It helps you select the key details related to the question, explain how the details connect to your question and to other details, and through that analysis, move to a conclusion. The conclusion that you draw is the basis for your claim, which you try to communicate as clearly and directly as you can.

Continue working in your home groups to share and compare your annotations from pages 36-46 and 89-94 regarding the push-and-pull factors for each focus figure.

Step 2

Use the tool in the following way:

Write down the guiding question in the space provided at the top. You might be assigned the guiding question by your teacher, it might come from a question set, or you might think of your own question. This question can help you focus your reading, or it might give your reading a specific purpose. It is likely to be a question that asks you to draw a conclusion that is factual, analytical, comparative, or evaluative in nature.
As you read the text, pay attention to details that relate to the guiding question. Depending on how long the section of text is, you might find several examples. You can use the Attend to Details row to write down the details that most strongly relate to the guiding question. This helps you narrow down the most supportable or most relevant details that connect to the question. Do not forget to include page numbers. You might have to come back later to get exact quotes or more clarity.
In the Analyze the Details row, you can show your thinking. Doing so can help you ensure there is a clear connection among the details you identified, your analysis, and the guiding question.
The third row, Explain Connections, asks you to show your thinking about how the details connect to each other. Do the facts and information, taken together, lead to a conclusion? Are they details from a narrative that help you analyze a character? Are they indicators of an author’s perspective that you intend to support or refute?
The final row asks you to form and express a claim. Look back over the tool and consider the guiding question, the details, and how they connect to each other. The conclusion you have drawn based on your analysis of the details in the previous rows should become your claim. Communicate that claim in a clear, direct sentence.

Step 3

Work with your group to describe the two most significant influences on each focus figure’s decision to migrate. As a group, use the three separate copies of the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to respond to each of the following questions:

What are the two most significant factors influencing Ida’s decision to leave the South?
What are the two most significant factors influencing George’s decision to leave the South?
What are the two most significant factors influencing Robert’s decision to leave the South?

For each guiding question, select key details that are most important for answering the guiding question.

Analyze the details by explaining how they connect to the guiding question.

Explain the connections between the details you selected.

Finally, form a claim by stating a conclusion you have drawn based on your analysis of the details.

Step 4

Once you have generated an evidence-based claim or examined an existing claim, you can use the tool to explain its derivation and support to others. To do this, begin at the bottom of the tool and work upward: present the claim, explain the analysis and evidence that led to it, and cite the key details that support it.

Once you have written your claims, evaluate them using the following questions:

Is the claim clearly stated?
Does the claim communicate your opinion or conclusion about your focus figure’s decision to leave the South?
Is the claim based on evidence that you gathered from the text?
Is the claim specific and supportable by evidence?

Step 5

To review and revise your claim, read it and ask yourself the following questions:

Is the claim clearly stated?
Does the claim communicate your opinion or conclusion about your character?
Is the claim based on evidence that you gathered from the text?
Is the claim supported by evidence?

If you answered "no" to any of the questions, think about how you might revise your claim.

Activity 3: Read

We will review some key vocabulary from part 2, focusing on important concepts and challenging words and paying attention to their use and meaning in the context in which Wilkerson presents them. We will write down important terms in a Vocabulary Journal so that we can refer back to them later in the unit.

For this activity, you will use your Vocabulary Journal and Vocabulary List which you will maintain for the entire unit. You might use a Vocabulary in Context Tool for words you can decipher from the text; for others, you might use morphology to decipher the meaning, or a reference resource to check if your meaning is accurate. For some words, your teacher might present you with definitions.

Working as a whole class, review the Vocabulary List for Part 2of the text. Locate the words as they are used in the text, referencing the provided page number, and consider the following questions for each term:

What does the context suggest that Wilkerson means when using this word? What is this word’s connotation, and how does it compare to a dictionary definition?
Why is this word and its meaning important to Wilkerson’s discussion and ideas in this part of the text?
How might I use this word in my own thinking, speaking, and writing?

Write down each key word, with your notes about its meaning and importance, in your Vocabulary Journal.

Activity 4: Read – Write

We will deconstruct and analyze mentor sentences from The Warmth of Other Suns, focusing on the structure, style, grammar, and punctuation used by Wilkerson to convey her tone and create mood. We will then use her sentences as models, applying our understanding of the concepts we study and adding to our writing repertoire by mimicking her structure, style, grammar, and punctuation.

Step 1

As you continue to read the texts in this unit, use your Mentor Sentence Journal to identify sentences that stand out to you as interesting or that represent a strong example of a particular concept you have learned. You can use these sentences to build a writer’s toolbox, wherein you have a number of techniques at your disposal to use when writing.

Work through the following steps for each mentor sentence in Mentor Sentence Handout 1. Follow your teacher’s directions regarding grouping, materials, and which mentor sentences you will analyze.

Step 2

Read the sentence aloud. Unpack any unfamiliar vocabulary using your vocabulary strategies. Then, determine what the sentence is saying, and paraphrase the sentence to convey its meaning based on your initial understanding.

Step 3

Deconstruct the whole into parts. Split the sentence up into parts as directed by your teacher; sometimes your teacher will give you the parts, and sometimes you will have to split the sentence on your own. Complete the following for each part:

Determine the parts of speech and function.
Note other observations about the part, such as examples of effective diction or changes in verb tense or point of view.

Step 4

Follow along as your teacher reviews the relevant grammatical terms and concepts of specific phrases and clauses, punctuation, syntax, mood, and tone.

Step 5

Analyze the concepts. Review, discuss, and revise your deconstruction notes. Then, respond to the following questions:

Which parts make up the main clause? The main clause is the main subject and predicate that expresses the central idea of the sentence. Write down the sentence, underlining the main clause.
How do the other parts of the sentence (e.g., phrases, clauses, modifiers) enhance the main clause?
How could you restructure this sentence so that it relays the same message to the reader? What is the impact of the different structures on your understanding?
What revisions need to be made to your initial paraphrasing now that you have increased your understanding of the sentence?

Step 6

Analyze mood, tone, and meaning. Discuss the following questions:

What mood does Wilkerson create in this sentence? How does she create it?
What tone is conveyed by Wilkerson in this sentence? How is that tone conveyed?
What does this sentence contribute to Wilkerson’s ideas in the book? How does it expand our understanding of the Great Migration?

Step 7

Follow your teacher’s directions about choosing one or two mentor sentences to mimic. Use your deconstruction analysis of your chosen sentences to write your own, mimicking what the author does in terms of structure, style, grammar, and punctuation. The specific content of your sentences is your choice. Be prepared to share your sentences with your peers.

Activity 5: Read

We will continue to track Wilkerson’s structure and sources in the first half of part 2 using the Structure Note-Taking Tool.

Step 1

On the Structure Note-Taking Tool, review the thread label directions and the completed Thread Label column for Part 1.

What do you notice about the thread labels that have been provided for you for Part 1?
Why might we be calling these threads?

Step 2

Work with your group to deepen understanding by tracking and evaluating the effects of details in each of the sections used by Wilkerson in the first half of Part 2. Use your quick-writes from the end of the previous lesson as well as your Jigsaw Note-Taking Tool notes to help you respond to the guiding questions on the tool. Also, work to label the thread for each; you might have to create some new labels if none of the previous ones fit.

Establishing Understanding:

What knowledge do I gain from this section of the text? (Include page numbers for each note.)
What questions do I still have after reading this section of the text?

Deepening Understanding:

How does the organization of the ideas and information in this section of the text enhance my understanding?
What stylistic elements stand out in this section of the text? How does the style enhance my understanding of the text?
What do the organization and style convey about the point of view and purpose of this section of text?

Activity 6: Discuss

We will share our revised and refined observations about Wilkerson’s use of structure in the text.

Review and sort the list of words or phrases that we generated at the end of Lesson 2 to describe Wilkerson’s structure. Respond to the following questions as a group:

What words do you think no longer apply and why?
What words do you think still apply and why?
What new words do you want to add and why?

Activity 7: Read

For homework, continue to complete the Structure Note-Taking Tool for the first half of part 2.

For homework, continue to complete the Structure Note-Taking Tool for the first half of Part 2of the text.

Write new or interesting words you encounter in your Vocabulary Journal.