A Multimodal Text Set: Immigration & Community

Anchor Text:

Wishtree

By Katherine Applegate

WHAT CAN I FIND ON THIS WEBSITE?

This website was designed as a resource for teachers who are wishing to teach a unit on the treatment of immigrants and the meaning of community. In addition to a set of texts, including children's books and multimedia resources, that can be taught as companion texts to Wishtree, we have also provided vocabulary and comprehension instructional resources that pair with Wishtree. The text set has a central focus on the treatment of immigrants in the United States, and how communities can be welcoming of newcomers whether they are immigrants or not, but also includes texts related to the ecological importance and animal habitats that trees provide in in nature to create their own little communities.

OVERVIEW

Below is a summary of the information that can be found on each webpage of this website, as well as hyperlinks to navigate you to the webpage of your choosing.

Introduction to the Unit

Overview of the Basic Information on the Unit
Significance of the Theme and Issue
Focusing Questions for the Unit
Anchor Text Information
Initiating Experiences

The Anchor Text (Wishtree)

A Detailed Summary of the Book and Descriptions of the Main Characters
Bibliographic Information
Book Talk
Rationale for Wishtree Being the Anchor Text of the Unit
Connections to:
- Historical Events
- Current Events
- Curriculum Content Areas

The Text Set

A collection of books that can be taught alongside Wishtree
- Each children's book featured in this presentation contains the following information:
  - Bibliographic information and a brief summary of the book
  - Genre, subgenre, and format of the book
  - Major awards
  - Explanation and rationale of how the book connects to the unit
  - Commentary on the cultural diversity of the text as it refers to:
    - Visual and verbal sensitivity
    - Authenticity and accuracy, including information about author's perspective
    - Ideology
  - Challenges and Affordances that the text may present
  - Links to the author's and/or illustrator’s website and/or social media accounts
A collection of connected texts (multimedia resources) that can be taught alongside Wishtree
- Each connected text featured in this presentation includes and explanation and rationale for how the text connects to the unity
Book Talks for a Selection of the Children's Books Included in the Text Set
Text Grouping
- A small grouping of six texts from both the children's books and the multimedia resources
  - Explanation of the text choices for the grouping
  - A brief overview of each text
  - A connection to an area of inquiry that is or has potential to be touched upon in the unit
Critical Literacy
- Problem-Posing Questions and Potential Answers for one children's book from the text set that was read from a critical stance
- A Potential Social Action/Social Justice Project

Vocabulary Instruction Resources

Wishtree was divided into five sections, about forty pages each, and ten Tier Two (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013, p. 9-10) vocabulary words were chosen from each section. From each of the ten words from each section, five words were chosen to develop further with instructional resources that included:

Part of speech
Child-friendly definition(s)
Context from Wishtree
Out of book context(s)
Synonyms
Other forms of the word, with the part of speech
Multimodal representations of the word (pictures, music, videos, etc.)

For each section of each of the five chosen words, five vocabulary instructional activities were designed to use with students to learn the vocabulary. Each of the five words for each section was one of the key words in at least one of the activities developed.

Comprehension Instruction Resources

We paced the reading of Wishtree as a whole-class reading experience over the course of three school weeks. Within the pacing guide, we included the following:

Skills and Strategies Focuses for each day that included a teacher read-aloud of the book
Dialogic Discussion Questions to prompt whole-group discussions on each day that included a teacher read-aloud of the book
Companion Texts from the children's books from the text set to accompany the sections of Wishtree read each week
Four Mini-Lessons throughout the three-week reading period; lessons were adapted from The Reading Strategies Book (Serravallo, 2015) to use with Wishtree
Two Activities for students to demonstrate their comprehension of the anchor text

The webpage also contains the following:

An example of the mini-lesson, Stories Teach Us About Life Issues
An example of the activity, Dear Diary
An example of the activity, Wishtree Wishes

References:

Applegate, K. (2017). Wishtree. New York, NY: Feiwel and Friends.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford Press.

Serravallo, J. (2015). The reading strategies book: Your everything guide to developing skilled readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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