Skip to Main Content

Lesson 4

We will use the historical lens to form and evaluate claims about Chapter 5 of the text.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I analyze how Alvarez’s perspective influences the position, purpose, and ideas of a text?

  • 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

  • Tradebook
    • In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010

Materials

Tools

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Discuss

We will review what we know about the historical lens from the previous lessons and how the lens relates to the text.

As a class, review your Historical Lens Note-Taking Tool and discuss the following questions:

  1. What have you learned about the historical lens thus far?

  2. How does the text affect your view of the historical events or circumstances?

  3. How does your background knowledge on the historical events or circumstance affect your experience with and understanding of the text?

Activity 2: Discuss – Write

We will apply our understanding of the historical lens to form a claim about the text.

Working in a small group, write the following guiding question in the Guiding Question section of your Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool:

  1. How does the text reflect the time in which the novel is set?

Focusing specifically on Chapter 5, find key details in the text that highlight the historical context of the novel and answer the guiding question.

Analyze each detail by explaining how the details connect to the guiding question.

Explain the connections among all the details: How do the details work together to tell the reader something about the time in which the novel is set?

Finally, form your claim. State a conclusion that answers the guiding question and takes into account the details you have chosen.

Activity 3: Write – Discuss

We will evaluate our claims and details to decide which claims are the strongest.

Step 1

On large poster paper, butcher paper, or shared electronic document, write your group’s claim.

Under the claim, in a bulleted list, write the details you selected as support for your claim.

Step 2

Once all claims and details have been posted, read the other groups’ claims and discuss them in your small group. Respond to the following question:

  1. Does this claim and its details clearly state how the text reflects the time in which it is set? And, if developed into an essay, which claim would I find interesting to read?

Step 3

Use the questions to help you, individually, vote on the top two claims.

Discuss your votes with the whole group, and respond to the following question:

  1. Which claim is the strongest and why?

Activity 4: Read – Write

For homework, we will read chapter 6.

For homework, read pages 84-99 of Chapter 6: "Minerva, 1949." Annotate the text for the following questions from the Section 2 Question Set as you read, or respond to the questions in your Learning Log:

  1. What do we learn about Minerva’s culture based on the rumor?

  2. What dangerous actions is Minerva starting to take? What do these actions reveal about her character?

  3. What are your impressions of El Jefe after reading this section? Justify your impressions with evidence from the text.

  4. Would you have made the same decisions as Minerva? If not, what would you have done differently?

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