Mini Lesson - Task 4  - Immigration

Creators of Unit: Janet Acerbi, Rosa Estevez, Eudes Budhai, Robert Ceballos

District: Mt. Vernon

Title of Unit: Immigration

Title of Lesson: Analyzing and Interpreting Quotations

Lesson Number:       4                  Duration of Lesson: 180 minutes

Outcomes:  

• Familiarize students with the structure of the ELA Task 4 Essay.
• Students will acquire the skill to interpret, analyze, agree and disagree with different quotes.

Student Writing Task: Comparative essay

Regents Task Addressed: Task 4

Standards Addressed:
ELA:
1 - Read, write, listen and speak for literary response.
2 - Read, write, listen and speak for critical analysis and evaluation.

Social Studies:

• Recent Immigrants

Materials/Resources:
Literature/Text

• Different quotations related to immigration.

Web Resources

• http://www.quoteland.com/ - This is a website that provides teachers with hundreds of quotes by topic, author, etc.

Procedures:

• Use five quotations attached above. They may expand on these by going to the link http://www.quoteland.com (This link will provide teachers with many more quotations if necessary.)
• Students, as a homework assignment, may be asked to think of 3-5 proverbs in their native language which apply to the theme of immigration and can be translated into English. 
• Cooperative learning strategy. Students are divided into groups. Each group will get a set of quotations and be asked to paraphrase, analyze, interpret, and state whether or not they agree with the statement. Students will then share their quotes and their work with the other members of the class.
• Each student chooses a quote that he or she finds the most powerful and wants to write about. Once he/she has chosen one, he/she must think of two examples of literature that support the quotation. The literature may be a play, a short story, a novel, a poem, a biography, a passage from the Bible, etc.
• Students write an outline. Different models may be used.
• Explain to students the structure that the ELA Task 4 has: Introduction, Interpretation of the quote and a statement of whether or not the student agrees with the quote, Body consisting of two paragraphs (one paragraph for the first literary work and another paragraph from the second literary work), and Conclusion. 

Assessment/ Evaluation : 

The student is evaluated for the entire writing process from beginning to end.