Coming of Age “You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was .”

1. Coming of Age“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.” -Abraham Lincoln

2. Table of Contents • Project Benefits • Unit Summary • Unit Objectives • Content Standards • Curriculum Framing Questions • Student Assessment • Project Summary

3. Benefits of Projects • Students are at the center of the learning process • Students gain valuable teamwork skills that are highly prized in business and industry • Students learn more through interaction with one another • Groups allow everyone to demonstrate their individual skills • Students are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through projects • Students are able to develop and demonstrate active inquiry and higher-level thinking skills • Students develop confidence and self-direction, as well as their research, organizational, technological, and communication skills. • Students are able to connect their academic work with real-life issues and situations, which makes them more motivated to learn • Students are presented with an opportunity to express their own creativity in an educational setting.

4. Unit Summary This semester, students will study various interpretations of the concept of “growing up” or “coming of age.” Class discussions allow students talk about their own experiences. Students will write individual essays, work with a partner to discuss each other’s cultural/familial ideas about growing up, and work in groups to create a final presentation.

5. Unit Objectives Students will develop compare/contrast skills using various types of material that displays a broad underlying theme. They will strengthen their expository writing skills by going through all steps of the writing process. Their writing is expected to reflect proper English grammar usage. Finally, students will practice oral presentation skills through their final group projects.

6. Content Standards The following English/Language Arts Content Standards will be met during this unit: • Reading 3.4 – Determine characters’ traits by what the characters say about themselves in narration, dialogue, dramatic monologue, and soliloquy. • Reading 3.7 – Recognize and understand the significance of various literary devices, including figurative language, imagery, allegory, and symbolism, and explain their appeal. • Writing 1.6 – Integrate quotations and citations into a written text while maintaining the flow of ideas. • Written and Oral English Language Conventions 1.1 – Identify and correctly use clauses, phrases, and mechanics of punctuation. • Written and Oral English Language Conventions 1.2 – Understand sentence construction and proper English usage. • Written and Oral English Language Conventions 1.3 – Demonstrate an understanding of proper English usage and control of grammar, paragraph and sentence structure, diction, and syntax.

7. Curriculum-Framing Questions • Essential Question: What Does Growing Up Mean? • Unit Questions: How can we learn about coming of age/growing up in different time periods? Different societies and cultures? How does this compare with your own experiences? • Content Questions: What are some examples of what growing up means to Esperanza in The House on Mango Street? What specific “rites of passage” will you go through or have you gone through to reach adulthood?

8. Assessment to Gauge Student Needs In order to assess the level of compare and contrast skills that students possess, a Quickwrite activity will be administered in which they will be asked to respond to a question by incorporating information on rites of passage from a museum exhibit and a textual reference from Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street.

9. Project Summary During this project, students will work together in small groups of 3-4 members to construct a working thesis that will ultimately be used to compare and contrast the two examples of growing up or coming of age that have been studied thus far. They will use the similarities and differences that have been contributed by classroom discussion as well as collaborate with each other to come up with at least 2 new examples that support their argument. Together they will identify specific textual evidence and references from the museum exhibit to support their claims. Finally, students will incorporate this information into a project to present to their classmates – as a PowerPoint, poster, booklet, etc.