Transcript Slide 1

Stall High School
We All Read
Schoolwide Book Project
There Are No Children Here
2007-2008
Why a school wide reading project?
 Reading/Writing
Across the
Curriculum
 Build Community
 Increase Interest in Non-fiction
Reading
Quick Literacy Statistics
 50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level
book.
 Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a
day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words
of text in a year.
 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription
medicine.
 When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it
factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade.
The educational careers of 25
to 40 percent of American
children are imperiled
because they don't read well
enough, quickly enough, or
easily enough.
Stall High School
We All Read: There Are No Children Here
At A Glance
Everyone gets a book
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Students
Teachers
Administrators
Office Staff
Student Concern Specialists
Cafeteria Workers/ Janitorial Staff/ Bus
Drivers
Housing Projects Video
www.youtube.com/watch?v=frg6gY6qXxI
The Evans family lived in the Cabrini Green
Projects... down the street from where our
novel is set.
ELA/ Writing Ties
Poetry
Editorials
Interviews
Proposal
Letter to the Author
Journaling
Book Review
Memoir
ELA/ Literature Ties
The Grapes of Wrath
Manchild in the Promised Land
Scorpions, Monster
Life In Prison
“Chicago”
The House on Mango St.
A Raisin the Sun
J. Steinbeck
Claude Brown
W.D. Myers
Tookie Williams
Carl Sandburg
Sandra Cisneros
LorraineHansberry
Comparing Texts:
Those who don’t know any better come into our
neighborhood scared. They think we’re
dangerous. They think we will attack them
with shiny knives. They are stupid people
who are lost and got here by mistake.
But we aren’t afraid. We know the guy with the
crooked eye is Davey the Baby’s brother,
and the tall one next to him in the straw
brim, that’s Rosa’s Eddie V. and the big one
that looks like a dumb grown man, he’s Fat
Boy, though he’s not fat anymore nor a boy.
All brown, all around, we are safe. But watch us
drive into a neighborhood of a different
color and our knees go shakity-shake and
our car windows get rolled up tight and our
eyes look straight ahead. Yeah. That’s how
it goes and goes.
The House on Mango Street
The youngsters had heard that the suburbbound commuters, from behind the
tinted train windows, would shoot at
them for trespassing on the tracks.
One of the boys, certain that the
commuters were crack shots, burst
into tears as the train whisked by.
Some of the commuters had heard
similar rumors about the neighborhood
children and worried that, like the
cardboard lions at the carnival
shooting gallery, they might be the
target of talented snipers. Indeed,
some sat away from the windows as
the train passed through Chicago’s
blighted core. For both the boys and
the commuters, the unknown was the
enemy.
There Are No Children Here
ELA/ Research Connections
Research Projects Topically Related to the text:
 Overpopulation in Prisons
 Juvenile Justice
 Welfare Reform
 Police Brutality
 Economics of the Drug Trade
 Teen Pregnancy
Gangs
RiDonte
Calvary
English II
Mrs. Gilbert
October 9, 2007
Survey results
Do you think gangs are a problem in North
Charleston?
Yes 75%
No 25%
Have you lost a friend or loved one to street
violence?
Yes 63% No 28%
Unsure9%
70 Stall High School students survey
Sociology
Using the radio documentary Ghetto Life
101as a model, students will create an oral
or visual record of a typical
week in their
neighborhoods/homes.
LeAIan Jones 13 years old,
recording Ghetto Life 101.
Me and my friend Lloyd Newman just did a description of
our life for a week, and we want to give you kids in
America a message: Don’t look at ghetto kids as different.
You might not want to invite us to your parties, you might
think we’ll rob you blind when you got your back turned.
But don’t look at us like that. Don’t look at us like we’re an
alien or an android or an animal or something. We have a
hard life, but we’re sensitive. Ghetto kids are not a
different breedwe’re human. Some people might say, “That boy don’t
know what he’s talkin’ about!” But I know what I’m talking
about. I’m dealing from the heart because I’ve been
dealing with this for thirteen years. These are my final
words, but you’ll be hearing from me again, ‘cause I’m an
up-and-rising activist.
Peace Out
Family Life/ Budgeting:
 Given
$542, plan a grocery list to
feed 11 people for 4 weeks.
 Use grocery store flyers/ go on a field
trip to a local supermarket & price
items.
 Create a presentation on how you will
budget your money
P. 140-142 TANCH
“Once a month, when LaJoe received her
public aid check, she hired a cab to take
her shopping...LaJoe bought enough to
feed herself, Lafeyette, Pharoah, the
triplets, and Lashawn, Lashawn’s boyfriend
and his brother, Lashawn’s two children,
Terence, and Weasel.”
Economics:
Use the novel as a tie in to Freakonomics:
“Why Do Drug Dealers Live with Their Moms?”.
An analysis of a crack dealing gang in Chicago
(the Black Nation Disciples). It covers economic
topics such as fixed & variable costs of
production, labor markets, supply & demand, and
monopolies.
Freakonomics Text Excerpt:
“A 1-in-4 chance of being killed! Compare these odds to
being a timber cutter, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics
calls the most dangerous job in the United States. Over four
years' time, a timber cutter would stand only a 1-in-200
chance of being killed. Or compare the crack dealer's odds to
those of a death row inmate in Texas, which executes more
prisoners than any other state. In 2003, Texas put to death
twenty-four inmates—or just 5 percent of the nearly 500
inmates on its death row during that time. Which means that
you stand a greater chance of dying while dealing crack in a
Chicago housing project than you do while sitting on death
row in Texas. So if crack dealing is the most dangerous job in
America, and if the salary is only $3.30 an hour, why on earth
would anyone take such a job?”
Math
Use the Cook County Criminal Courts Inventory to
create a pie chart showing the percentage
breakdown of the crimes committed by the
inmates for the year 1988.
P. 131 TANCH
“The 1988 inventory of the Cook
County Criminal Courts included 14
perjuries; 103 bribes...8419 rapes;
1584 armed robberies; 1351 accused
of unlawful use of a weapon...”
ESOL/ Language Arts
Read a novel with Hispanic characters
facing similar struggles, such as Parrot in
the Oven or Trino’s Choice. Students
create a visual project comparing the two
works.
Psychology:
Mazlow’s Heirarchy of Needs
Urica p. 134/ Growing Up in a “War Zone”
Schoolwide Community Service
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Partnering with the Lowcountry Food Bank
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Canned/ Non-perishable food drive
sponsored by Student Government
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Saturday Food Packaging/ Family Activity
Author Visit
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3 assemblies
Author luncheon
Student performance
Project display