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ACTIVITY 1.6 continued
3 FIRST READ: Based on the complexity of the passage and your knowledge of your students, you may choose to conduct the first reading in a variety of ways:
• independent reading • paired reading
• small-group reading • choral reading
• read aloud
Text Complexity Overall: Complex
Lexile: 980L
Qualitative: High Difficulty Task: Moderate (Analyze)
4 As students are reading, monitor their progress. Be sure they are engaged with the text and annotating details and examples to use in the vocabulary tree. Evaluate whether the selected reading mode is effective. If students seem to be frustrated, consider changing modes before the second read.
5 As students begin to read the letter from de Crèvecoeur, instruct them to diffuse words, phrases,
or concepts that they do not understand. If diffusing is a new strategy for students, direct them to the strategies list in the back of the Student Edition, and model the strategy after reading a few sentences of the letter.
28 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 11
SCAFFOLDING THE TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS
1. Key Idea and Details (RI.11–12.1) What are some experiences that define this “new race of men”? Reread paragraph 1, looking for details about the experiences of the “two thirds” who had no country in Europe. What happened to them in their European homelands? How was their experience different in America?
2. Key Idea and Details (RI.11–12.2) In paragraph 1, what opinion does the author express about a poor “countryman’s” place in Europe versus his place in
America? Scan paragraph 1 for a rhetorical question about a poor “countryman’s” place in Europe.
What judgment is implied by the answer the author provides to the question?
3. Craft and Structure (RI.11–12.4) What does the word kindred mean in paragraph 2? Locate the word in paragraph 2. Look for words in the same sentence and nearby that can help you determine the word’s meaning. What smaller word inside kindred can provide a clue?
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28 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 11
ACTIVITY 1.6
continued
Defining an American
WORD CONNECTIONS
Multiple Meanings
The word asylum, used in the first paragraph, means a safe haven or a sanctuary. But asylum has different meanings in other contexts. Asylum
was once frequently used to refer to an institution offering shelter and support to people who were mentally ill. The protection granted by a nation to someone who has left his or her native country as a political refugee is also called asylum.
penury: extreme poverty procured: gained
motives: reasons
metamorphosis: change
province: part of a country
Letter
by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
1 In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose, should they ask one another, what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! Urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become
men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war: but now, by the power of transplantation, like all other plants, they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil list of their country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws, and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol
of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labours; these accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen; and to that title every benefit is affixed which men can possibly require. This is the great operation
daily performed by our laws. From whence proceed these laws? From our government. Whence that government? It is derived from the original genius and strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by government. This is the great chain which links us all, this is the picture which every province exhibits, Nova Scotia excepted. There the crown has done all; either there were no people who had genius, or it was not much attended to: the consequence is, that the province is very thinly inhabited indeed; the power of the crown, in conjunction with the musketos, has prevented men from settling there. Yet some part of it flourished once, and it contained a mild harmless set of people. But for the fault of a few leaders the whole were banished. The greatest political error the crown ever committed in America, was to cut off men from a country which wanted nothing but men!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813) published his fictional Letters from an American Farmer to provide people in England and Europe a glimpse of life in the American colonies.
What Is
an American? from Letters from an American Farmer (1781)
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.