Page 11 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

Close Reading of informational/literary nonfiction Texts (continued)
stimulate: revive; restore; energize endeavor: try hard to do or achieve something
foreclosure: legal proceeding that takes back property for failure to pay
ACTIvITy 3
Independent Practice
The speech that follows is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address. When Roosevelt assumed the office of President of the United States in 1933, the nation had already endured three years of economic hardship in the Great Depression. Millions of citizens were unemployed, and millions more were barely earning a living wage. In his first speech as president, Roosevelt addresses the challenges he, and all Americans, must face.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the passage silently to yourself. As you read, think about the meanings of the underlined and bolded words. Look at the definitions in the right margin, and also use your knowledge of the words and context clues to help you make meaning of the text.
speech First
Inaugural Address
By Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1 This Nation asks for action, and action now.
2 Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting
by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war,
but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects
to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources. Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
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SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
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