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Lesson 1

We will use the Attending to Details Tool to examine Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I use connections among details, elements, and effects to make logical deductions about an author’s perspective, purpose, and meaning in texts?

Texts

Core

  • Unit Reader
    • Chapter 4, excerpt from Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance, HarperCollins Publishers, 2016

Materials

Tools

Reference Guides

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Read – Write

We will use the Attending to Details Tool as we read Chapter 4 from Hillbilly Elegy.

Review the Attending to Details Tool.

Read Chapter 4 from Hillbilly Elegy. While reading, complete a copy of the Attending to Details Tool, guided by the following question:

  1. What should outsiders understand about Vance’s community?

Activity 2: Read – Write

We will think about the meaning of each of the details we selected.

Step 1

The Evaluating Ideas Tool supports and guides a process for evaluating a text, and it focuses on the author’s purpose, perspective, and credibility. It can help you think about and analyze relationships among details in the text, how those details suggest the author’s motivation for writing the text, and how the author views the topic. This tool focuses on a guiding question related to the author’s purpose or perspective and helps you make an observation or conclusion about the overall ideas, believability, and relevance of the text.

Step 2

For each detail you selected from Hillybilly Elegy, describe what it means and how it relates to the guiding question.

  1. What should outsiders understand about Vance’s community?

Use the tool in the following way:

  1. 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 will usually be a question that leads to an evaluation or judgment about the text based on evidence that suggests its purpose, perspective, or credibility.

  2. As you read, note details (words, phrases, or sentences) that relate to the guiding question or that might give you evidence of the author’s perspective. Depending on how long the section of text is, you might find several examples. You can use the Attend to Details row on the tool to write down the details that most strongly relate to the guiding question.

  3. Determine and analyze the author’s perspective based on the details you identify. The Analyzing Perspective row asks you to look at the words or phrases you selected in the previous row and think about why the author chose those words or phrases and not others. For example, if the author is using words like urgent or critical, you can get a sense of their perspective on the issue: the author considers it important and in need of immediate attention or action.

  4. Evaluate the author’s ideas, the author’s position, and the information the author presents. Your guiding question will probably hint at what you are supposed to evaluate; you might be looking to assess credibility or relevance.

  5. Evaluatethe text based on the evidence you have gathered and your analysis of that evidence. The previous rows provide that evidence and analysis. In the Evaluate the Text row, you are making connections between your analysis and your evaluation. For example, if your evaluation involves determining whether the author’s argument is reliable, you will draw on the previous rows to support your judgment and observations about the text’s reliability.

Activity 3: Discuss

We will discuss our understanding of Hillbilly Elegy.

After examining what Vance wants outsiders to know about his community, write down observations you found in Hillybilly Elegy and any questions you have about it.

Share your ideas with the whole group during discussion.