Monday, March 2, 2015

January's Sparrow

Written and Illustrated by Patricia Polacco
Copyright ©2009 
Published by The Penguin Group

Awards: IRA Teacher's Choice Selection

Interest Level: Grades 4-8
Lexile Reading Level: 760L
Accelerated Reader: 4.4, Points: 1.0
Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading Level: R
DRA: 40

Summary: After seeing their friend brutally killed ten-year old Sadie and her family decide they must leave the slave plantation they live at and set along the underground railroad for the North. 

Five Words or Phrases to Describe the Book: 
Slavery, Freedom, Underground Railroad, Family,  Staying Alert

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

Suggested Delivery: Depending on what grade and reading level the students are at affects the delivery. This book would be a great fit for a read aloud, a group reading, or independent reading. The  book is 96 pages which makes it relatively long for a read aloud in one sitting, but the language may be difficult for a struggling reader because the dialogue is based on slang and southern dialects. 

Classroom Activities:

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery

This link to History.com has videos, photographs, and articles on slavery in America. Students can research slavery before reading the book so they have a basic grasp of what happened.

After reading the book the students can go to this website listed below and read and learn about the emancipation proclamation. Having a grasp over what ended slavery support social studies instruction as well as ELA instruction.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/

A key part of this book is the idea of speaking in the third person compared to speaking in the first person because by the end of the book the narrator steps forward and introduces himself while previously he was speaking in the third person while narrating. Some good questions to ask in class to confirm comprehension would be:

  • Who is narrating the text?
  • What really happened to January?
  • Why did the slave trackers come for Sadie and her family?
  • Why is Sadie horrified when she sees the pig being sold? How does this affect the story?
Vocabulary:
Paddy RollersSlave patrols were organized groups of white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon black slaves in the antebellum U.S. southern states.
Smote: to strike or hit hard, with or as with a hand, a stick, or other weapon.
Commenced: began.
Underground Railroada network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.
Negro
a member of a dark-skinned group of peoples originally native to Africa south of the Sahara.
 
Abolitionist: a person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution, especially capital punishment or (formerly) slavery.




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