Page 69 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

Close Reading of informational Texts in social studies/history (continued)
ACTIvITy 1
Guided Practice
You will read the texts in this activity at least three times, focusing on a different purpose for each reading.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the following texts silently. Your focus for this first reading is on understanding the meaning of each text. As you read, practice diffusing the words you may not know by replacing unfamiliar words with synonyms or definitions for the underlined words. Use the definitions and synonyms in the margins to help your understanding.
From
This Land Was Made for You and Me:
The Lifeand Songsof WoodyGuthrie
flophouse: a very inexpensive hotel for poor people who do not have anywhere else to live
Hooverville: a collection of shacks that housed the unemployed and homeless during the Great Depression of the 1930s. (Herbert Hoover was president at that time, so these camps were sarcastically named after him.)
sea chantey: a song sung by sailors in rhythm with their work
folk song: a song created by the people of a country or region
melody: a pleasing series of musical notes that form the main part of a song or piece of music
By Elizabeth Partridge
1 “I hate a song that makes you think that you’re not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. I am out to fight those kind of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.”
2 Woody Guthrie could never cure himself of wandering off. One minute he’d be there, the next he’d be gone, vanishing without a word to anyone, abandoning those he loved best. He’d throw on a few extra shirts, one on top of the other, sling his guitar over his shoulder, and hit the road. He’d stick out his thumb and hitchhike, swing onto moving freight trains, and hunker down with other traveling men in flophouses, hobo jungles, and Hoovervilles across Depression America.
3 He moved restlessly from state to state, soaking up some songs: work songs, mountain and cowboy songs, sea chanteys, songs from the southern chain gangs. He added them to the dozens he already knew from his childhood until he was bursting with American folk songs. Playing the guitar and singing, he started making up new ones: hard-bitten, rough- edged songs that told it like it was, full of anger and hardship and hope and love.
4 Woody said the best songs came to him when he was walking down a road. He always had fifteen or twenty songs running around in his mind, just waiting to be put together. Sometimes he knew the words, but not the melody. Usually he’d borrow a tune that was already well known—the simpler the better. As he walked along, he tried to catch a good, easy song that people could sing the first time they heard it, remember, and sing again later.
2 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
biography excerpt
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