HS ELA Guide

You are going to read a short article about the Dust Bowl days in American history titled “Black Blizzard.” You will also look at some photographs taken during that time period. As you read and study the photographs, think about how this experience may have affected the individual people who lived through it.

Finally, you will write a narrative, showing how a particular small moment during this experience affected one person.

Here are your choices for your narrative: A. A young child watching the “black blizzard” rolling in over the plains B. A young child, watching a tractor knock down his family home in Oklahoma, several years into the Dust Bowl drought C. A mother sitting on her front steps in a migrant camp in California D. An unemployed father, arriving at a squatter camp in California from Oklahoma

● Full Prompt and Text Sets ● Annotated Student Samples ● Sample Narrative Rubric

● Student Narrative/Biography ( Mirrors and Windows p. 819) Scaffolding in Action

● Prewriting Strategies ● Chunking an Extended Essay ● 5 Paragraph Outline ● MLA Format (Nearpod) ● Evaluate Student Samples ● Short Story Lesson Plan from Write the World

Skill Building

● Write the World (competitions and writing groups for teens) ● Publish in different format: video, podcast, website, infographic ● Submit to school’s newspaper or literary journal ● Turn it into an OpEd and submit to the newspaper ● Submit for publication: learn how to write a query letter, research publications for submissions, submit essay or narrative for publication Multilingual Learners will construct language arts narratives that ● Develop and describe characters and their relationships over a progression of experiences or events ○ Action verbs to describe character behaviors (Joe leaps into action, grabs his phone and dives for the door, yelling for Julie to follow him.) ○ Complex sentences to establish context and characters (He stayed with the job because the merchant, although he was an old grouch, treated him fairly.) ● Develop story, advancing the plot and themes with complications and resolutions, time and event sequences ○ A variety of verb tenses to pace the narrative and

Extension (Make it Real)

Language Expectations for Multilingual Learners

Last Updated August 13, 2024

High School ELA, Page 48