Newsela

Student Learning Objectives

Content

Students will explore how knowledge is recorded and shared by drawing connections between the central ideas in a folktale and an informational article.

Language

Students will exchange ideas and use observation and inference sentence frames with evidence to explain how storytelling connects to memory, identity, and survival.

Foundations

Students will compare and contrast how a folktale and an informational article explain why stories matter.

Connections to

Knowledge-Building:

Students begin the unit by exploring stories as systems for carrying memory, wisdom, history, and cultural knowledge.

Enduring Understanding:

Stories shape how humans remember the past and imagine the future.

Future Lessons:

In Lesson 2, students will build background on the science fiction aspects of the novel. In Lesson 3, students will continue to build background knowledge by exploring how their brain forms memories based on stories.

Unit Performance Task:

This first lesson introduces students to some of the central ideas of the novel, including storytelling, memory, history, and cultural traditions, which will eventually be central ideas that students can explore further in their own narrative writing.

Lesson Flow	Purpose of Learning Experience
Launch15 Minutes	Students will begin the unit by reading and discussing a folktale about shared wisdom.
Learning in Action30 Minutes	Part A: Annotating for Central Ideas (RI.8.2) Students partner-read an informational article and annotate for reasons humans preserve stories and histories, and discuss why stories from the oral tradition are as important as evidence-based histories. Learning in Action B: Making Connections Between Texts (RL.8.2, RI.8.2) Students use the Give One, Get One routine to connect the folktale’s theme to the article’s central idea, citing evidence from both texts.
Look Back5 Minutes	Students reflect in writing on what might happen if stories about the past disappear.

Lesson Flow

Purpose of Learning Experience

Launch15 Minutes

Students will begin the unit by reading and discussing a folktale about shared wisdom.

Learning in Action30 Minutes

Part A: Annotating for Central Ideas (RI.8.2)

Students partner-read an informational article and annotate for reasons humans preserve stories and histories, and discuss why stories from the oral tradition are as important as evidence-based histories. Learning in Action B: Making Connections Between Texts (RL.8.2, RI.8.2) Students use the Give One, Get One routine to connect the folktale’s theme to the article’s central idea, citing evidence from both texts.

Look Back5 Minutes

Students reflect in writing on what might happen if stories about the past disappear.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary for Additional Support

species: a group of living things of the same kind
foraging:: the acquisition of food by hunting, fishing, or the gathering of plant materials
oral history or “oral tradition”: stories and memories passed down by speaking instead of writing
evidence-based history:: reports of the past based on written records

Lesson Texts