GRADE LEVEL: 3
SUBJECT: ELA, Social Studies, Science
INTENDED UNIT: Systems & Power
ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How does the refugee experience impact people’s lives?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS/BIG IDEAS:
How have people historically, and in the present, challenged systems of oppression?
How can we identify and analyze the systems of power affecting our lived experience?
CONTENT OBJECTIVE:
Knowledge: Students will reflect on the impact of the experiences of Vietnamese American children of refugees.
Skills: Utilizing resistance reads as a means of counter-storytelling and disruption of oppressive narratives.
Habits: Reflection, critical thinking, identifying and analyzing systems of oppression
GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT AREA STANDARDS:
ELA
Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series).
Ask and answer questions about information from a speaker, offering appropriate elaboration and detail.
Social Studies
Science
Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.
Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.
CA ELD STANDARDS:
Exchanging information and ideas with others through oral collaborative discussions on a range of social and academic topics.
Listening actively to spoken English in a range of social and academic contexts.
Reading closely literary and informational texts and viewing multimedia to determine how meaning is conveyed explicitly and implicitly through language.
IEP/504 ACCOMMODATIONS:
All lesson plans will be accommodated with a transcript (for video clips), student facing worksheets, and visual slides ready to be shared and accessed.
Feel free to accommodate extra time for any formative assignments and provide scaffolds as needed for differing age groups/needs.
Refer to specific accommodations in students’ IEP/504 plans.
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
Slides (link)
Behind the Book | The Paper Boat Video (link)
The Paper Boat by Thao Lam Video (link)
a . e-Book available on Epic! (link)
b. Book available at San Jose Public Library
c. Book available at Santa Clara County Library District
Ants Migration Patterns | Ants Migration Video (link)
Ants Ingenious Survival Method During Flood | Superswarm | BBC Earth Video (link)
Betty Duong Oral History (09:13 - 13:38)
Viet Thanh Nguyen Oral History (06:18 - 09:41)
”Double Bubble” template (1 for each student) (link)
LESSON IMPLEMENTATION SEQUENCE:
Day 1 Step 1: Land Acknowledgement, Essential Question, & Warmup
Duration: 10 minutes
Implementation:
Lead the class through a land acknowledgement as appropriate to your specific context.
Introduce the essential questions to the class:
How does the refugee experience impact people’s lives?
Students may not be familiar with the word “refugee,” so you may choose to spend time explaining the meaning of the word, but it is also one of the vocabulary words that will be reviewed later in the lesson.
Play the interview with the author (5 minutes), and lead the class in a discussion of the Warmup questions:
Does this video or the book remind you of anything you have learned about before?
When Thao was a child, why do you think her family was forced to move away from their home in Vietnam?
Resources/Materials:
Slides 1-7
Behind the Book | The Paper Boat
Assessment: Class discussion
Day 1 Step 2: Vocabulary
Duration: 5 minutes
Implementation:
Have students read/write the vocabulary words and the definitions. Then, have students draw an example related to the words.
Resources/Materials: Slides 8-9
Assessments: N/A
Day 1 Step 3: Read Aloud & Connections to Science
Duration: 30 minutes
Implementation:
Lead a read aloud of the story with the students, and stop to check for students’ understanding throughout the read aloud as necessary to point out key features of the text. Scaffolding students’ observations will be important to enhancing their understanding of the story because it has no text–only illustrations.
Play the ant migration videos, and guide the students to understand the connections between the migration patterns of ants to the experiences of the refugees in the book. Lead a class discussion on the following questions:
What adaptations do ants have in order to survive?
Why do you think the author included ants in her book?
If you could choose an animal to represent yourself, what animal would you choose?
Resources/Materials:
Slides 10-12
The Paper Boat by Thao Lam
Ants Migration Patterns | Ants Migration
Ants Ingenious Survival Method During Flood | Superswarm | BBC Earth
Assessment: Class discussion
Day 2 Step 4: Land Acknowledgement and Review
Duration: 5 minutes
Implementation:
Lead the class through a land acknowledgement as appropriate to your specific context.
Review the following with students as a warm-up to the rest of the lesson:
Summarize The Paper Boat.
What did we learn about ants from yesterday?
What is the importance of the ants in the story?
Resources/Materials: Slides 13-15
Assessment: Class discussion
Day 2 Step 5: AAPI Perspectives Interview Clips
Duration: 15 minutes
Implementation:
Play the AAPI Perspectives Interview Clips (10 minutes). Places to pause to clarify and check for students’ understanding may include:
Betty Duong
What does “entrepreneurial” mean?
Clarify that “cooking wafers” does not refer to food.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Resources/Materials:
Slides 16-18
Betty Duong Oral History
Viet Thanh Nguyen Oral History
Assessment: N/A
Day 2 Step 6: Discussion & Reflections
Duration: 30 minutes
Implementation:
Lead students through the following discussion questions:
What did you learn about Betty’s experience being a child of Vietnamese refugee parents?
What did you learn about Viet’s experience being a child of Vietnamese refugee parents?
The author of The Paper Boat Thao Lam and Viet were both very young when their families were forced to leave Vietnam. How were their journeys similar or different?
Think about what we learned about the resilience of ants and their migration journeys. How is the journey of the ants in The Paper Boat similar or different to the experiences of Betty’s family? Viet’s family?
Students will work in pairs or small groups. They will compare and contrast the ants to the people/families in The Paper Boat and the AAPI Perspectives Interview Clips. Prompt students to think about similarities/differences with the following question: What adaptations or characteristics helped them in their lives?
Resources/Materials: “Double bubble” template (1 for each student)
Assessment: Completion of “double bubble” template