Sample Chapter

Unit 1: American Journeys

This is an image of the first page of Unit 1. It contains a list of reflection questions setting the tone for the chapter. (pg. 6)

The theme of this chapter is journeys to America and how immigrants can come to America, where people are from, and differences in cultures. Throughout the unit, there are several passages touching on ideas such as how it feels to move to America, American culture versus immigrant cultures, and stories about the beginning of immigration to America in the late 1800s to now.

This is the image located on the opposite of the left side image. It illustrates children from various ethnicities in the crown of the Statue of Liberty. (pg. 7)

What types of activities are in this unit?

This chapter contains several passages of varying genres such as a graphic novel, informational articles, opinion articles, poems, realistic fiction, and a play. The vocabulary words for this specific chapter are homeland, immigrant, freedom, language, trade, treatment, religion, and settle. The main purpose of the chapter is to expose students to different types of writing and to practice retelling stories similarly to how they were exemplified in the textbook. The last two pages focus on reflection and partner discussion with images to help students visualize the flow of the conversation.

There are very few tasks throughout the text. It is explicitly a passage or reading text. There are only a couple of tasks or activities, most of them being very short and very simple. There is not much structure that can be seen as favorable or unfavorable to some teachers. If you want to have a more adaptive text that has a baseline that you can build off of to make your own student-geared activities, this is perfect. It gives age-appropriate passages, many of which are hard to find outside a book like this. However, if you like having a structure in a textbook where activities can be done by the student for homework or partner work, this textbook will not work for you. I think this textbook allows for teacher creativity and adaptability for a teacher who has a group of mixed proficiency. It will require work to utilize most effectively which many teachers may not have. It is a good secondary book to have in your back pocket as a teacher to pull good resources from, but I would not recommend it as a primary textbook to help with effective English development since it lacks the necessary structure and explanations most other textbooks include such as grammar explanations and examples, exercises to practice sentence creation, or solid conversation practice.