Introduction
Inside Out & Back Again Book Trailer
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In this unit, you will build your close reading skills as you consider the crisis of war coming close to home. You begin the novel Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, focusing on how critical incidents reveal the dynamic nature of Ha, the main character, whose Vietnamese family is deciding whether to flee during the fall of Saigon. The novel is poignantly told in diary entries in the form of short free-verse poems. You will consider how text structure, figurative language, and specific word choice contribute to a text’s meaning as they closely read selected poems. Your study of the novel is paired with reading a rich informational article, “The Vietnam Wars,” which gives students key background knowledge about the history of the war in Vietnam. You will build your skills using context clues, and also begin the routine of “QuickWrites,” receiving explicit instruction and then practicing writing strong paragraphs in which they effectively cite and analyze text. For your Mid-Unit Assessment, you will analyze how key incidents in the novel reveal Ha’s character. In the second half of the unit, you will continue to read the novel paired with informational text, as they focus in on critical incidents the
character experiences leading up to the fall of Saigon. You begin to more carefully examine how word choice and tone contribute to the meaning of both informational text and specific poems in the novel. |
Essential Questions:
What is home?
How do critical incidents reveal character?
What common themes unify the refugee experience?
How can we tell powerful stories about people’s experiences?
How do critical incidents reveal character?
What common themes unify the refugee experience?
How can we tell powerful stories about people’s experiences?