Section II: Class Profile/Introductory Week
Manheim Township Middle School
8 th Grade English
Manheim Township Middle School is in Neffsville, Pennsylvania. The middle school is close to the border between Downtown Lancaster and Neffsville.
Because of the location of the school, Manheim Township Middle School has a mix of students: some being from high middle class suburban homes, and some coming from poverty level urban homes.
With Mr. Robbins, I teach 6 classes ranging from 12-24 students. Students come from mixed religious and economic backgrounds. Though Manheim
Township schools were known previously to be suburban schools,
Manheim Township is now receiving many students from Lancaster city.
This new admittance has changed both the socio-economic scale and the diversity of the school.
The Streaks team has several GIEP and IEP students but no ESL students.
The students from the Streaks team chosen include one with a GIEP and one with an IEP. The students from Mrs. O’Gorman’s classes are in a regular academic classroom.
Jia
Jia is an IEP student at Manheim Middle School. She is very quiet and does not like to talk in front of the class. At an IEP meeting with her parents it was obvious that she has parents who are very loving and love her as their own though she was adopted. Her parents are divorced and she has one younger sister who is in the grade below her. It was explained that the main inspiration for Jia to do well in school is so that she doesn’t have to be in the same grade as her sister. Last year, this was what kept Jia from failing. Jia excels in mathematics, but does poorly in English class. Before
Jia’s interest in math, Jia did not have any subject that she liked. Jia has social and sensory issues. She is afraid to interact with peers. Jia’s sensory issues require her to wear different clothing than her peers, but her OCD has helped her because she has developed an OCD for her makeup and

appearance. Jia seems to be a student that just floats by, and in at least
English, does the bare minimum.
Peter
Peter is a GIEP student in Mr. Robbins’s class. He is extremely clever and uses vocabulary and a manner of speaking that definitely separates him from his peers. Peter also has cyclical migraines, which happen about once a month. During Peter’s migraines he wears glasses in class to help with the pain. He has described that his migraines are so bad in the morning that they literally make him sick. Peter performs above most expectations in the classroom. He, like Jia suffers socially. It is part of his GIEP to get Peter to use smaller words with his peers.
Zeb
Zeb is a polite and focused African-American student on the Lightning Team at Manheim Township Middle School. With a neat appearance and a long attention span, Zeb works conscientiously in class, and had no hesitation to seek additional help. He came to his teachers with questions in advance of the first grammar quiz; later he yielded the highest score of all the seventh grade sections. His mother is also an English teacher and helps him outside of class. Zeb has never been observed speaking out of turn in class, as so many of his peers that age do, and seems to keep to himself.
Sydney
Sydney is a quiet, focused seventh grade student, also on the Lightning
Team at MTMS. She seems extremely shy and has little eye contact with teachers. Although she does average work in English class, she almost never participates in class discussions. Her parents, who are extremely supportive of their children academically and assist with schoolwork at home, have expressed to Sydney’s teachers that they would like if she could be encouraged in order to increase her confidence. The only place Sydney seems to be comfortable is while dancing, playing instruments and singing where she excels mechanically, but struggles with extreme stage fright.
Sydney comes from a good home and appears to have just a few close friends with whom she spends her time.

Introductory Week
Day 1: Group Collaboration Ice Breaker: Spaghetti and Marshmallow
Tower Construction Contest.
Day 2: How We Will Approach Texts in this Unit: students will read and then watch videos on modern music videos of songs about forgiveness and discuss different perceptions about the text. The interpretations will be splashed on the board and discussed as a group.
Songs:
Evanescence- Forgive Me Fun Fact: Evanescence means to disappear like vapor.
Taylor Swift- You’re still an innocent- is about forgiving yourself
After Kanye stole the mic from Taylor Swift for winning an award over
Beyoncé, she wrote this song
Stealing the mic footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeuHxZURHls
Beyoncé lets Taylor finish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Ptb7rknN0&feature=related
Another refrain from the song more specifically targets Kanye: “You’re 32 and still growing up now…..Who you are is not what you did.”
Source: http://thecomet.com/posts/taylor_swift_kanye_west_update
To show the jealousy that sparks the Down Once More scene these are greats video to lead up to it
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44w6elsJr_I

All I Ask of You (Reprise)) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75STnoaR1w
Down Once More/ Track Down this Murderer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Z0pDRG_t0 (this video cuts the phantom’s violence towards Raul out which might be too graphic.) The important part is that students know the backstory of The Phantom of the
Opera to understand the video.
WORD SPLASH
Write one word on the board to describe what they saw in the video.
Describe the character’s feelings when forgiving, forgiven.
Day 3: Thematic and Interest-Sparking Exercise
Tying drama and forgiveness together I think I will show movie clips and trailers of forgiveness in contemporary film. After each trailer students will predict what instances of forgiveness could be shown in this film in a
“think-pair-share” (Milner, 41).
The Vow- a husband must forgive his wife for forgetting him after a coma http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JoXHO3ceUY
Big Fish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d-kjzBmz6I boy comes to terms with his Father’s Tall Tales
Shrek
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W37DlG1i61s Many instances of
Forgiveness in this movie. Shrek forgives Fiona for not telling him about her condition. Donkey forgives Shrek for treating him badly.
Shrek forgives the kingdom for treating him poorly.

Journal Entry (15 min.): Write about an instance that you have seen forgiveness in a film.

Day 4 Book Day: Get books in the library, each student is paired with another student. Students are assigned either to learn about Shakespeare’s life or to learn about the time period of Shakespeare. The students will then pair up and have xtranormal characters teach each other about each of their topics, so each topic will be for one character.
Example: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/13973801/practice
Partner Rubric:
Ruberic
Preparedness
Participation
Creativity
1
My partner hardly prepared any information for our
Xtranormal
Presentation
My partner barely helped me make the Xtranormal presentation. I did most of the work.
My partner didn’t help me come up with many ideas for our presentation
2
My partner was prepared, but not as much as I thought he or she should be
My partner only helped me a little in my Xtranormal presentation. I did more of the work.
I made up more of the ideas on how to make our
Xtranomal presentation
3
My partner was completely prepared
My partner helped me equally or did more of the work.
My partner equally helped or helped even more than me in the creative process of my project
Day 5: Finish Writers’ Workshop activity and Related Thematic Pre-
Reading Activity:
Go over Jigsaw, once with your group thinking of the top things to tell the other groups, then, once with a mixed group.
Poison Tree” poem by William Blake (40 minutes)
Hand out copies of the poem. Students should make a note next to each line of the poem explaining what they think the author is trying to say.
Then in groups of five students each, students should discuss the following questions based on the poem using the Cooperative Carousel activity:

(Circle Justice Lesson, 2012). Each student should be assigned one question
(below) and will record the groups’ answer at the bottom of their poem paper.
1. Explain the contrast in the first stanza.
-The contrast is between sharing our anger and keeping it a secret.
2. What metaphor is introduced in the second stanza?
-The growth of anger is being compared to the growth of a tree.
3. What reason might the speaker’s enemy have had to steal the apple?
-The enemy wanted to steal the apple because he knew it belonged to the speaker.
4. Explain the meaning of the last two lines.
-The foe (enemy) was killed by the speaker’s anger.
5. What does the apple symbolize?
-The apple is a symbol for the danger which anger can cause—the poison.
The poem can be found in the following location: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poison-tree/