Page 28 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade7_Flipbook

interpreting the Text Using Close Reading
Learning Targets
• Apply understanding of how personal narratives are structured to comprehend a text.
• Read closely and annotate a text to find language resources an author uses to tell a story.
• Read closely to make inferences and draw conclusions.
• Use knowledge of morphology, context, reference materials, and visual cues to
determine the meaning of words.
Read and Annotate
Read “The Scholarship Jacket” and annotate the text as you read.
■ Use the My Notes area to write questions or ideas you have about the story. ■ Underline words and phrases that tell you how or when an action takes place. ■ Put a star next to the central incident.
■ Put exclamation marks next to the narrator’s responses to the incident.
■ Circle unknown words or phrases.
aCTiViTY 1.3
My Notes
Personal Narrative
The
Scholarship
Jacket
by Marta Salinas
1 The small Texas school that I went to had a tradition carried out every year during the eighth-grade graduation: a beautiful gold and green jacket (the school colors) was awarded to the class valedictorian, the student who had maintained the highest grades for eight years. The scholarship jacket had a big gold S on the left front side and your name written in gold letters on the pocket.
2 My oldest sister, Rosie, had won the jacket a few years back, and I fully expected to also. I was fourteen and in the eighth grade. I had been a straight A student since the first grade and this last year had looked forward very much to owning that jacket. My father was a farm laborer who couldn’t earn enough money to feed eight children, so when I was six I was given to my grandparents to raise. We couldn’t participate in sports at school because there were registration fees, uniform costs, and trips out of town; so, even though our family was quite agile and athletic there would never be a school sports jacket for us. This one, the scholarship jacket, was our only chance.
3 In May, close to graduation, spring fever had struck as usual with a vengeance. No one paid any attention in class; instead we stared out the windows and at each other, wanting to speed up the last few weeks of school. I despaired every time I looked in the mirror. Pencil thin, not a curve anywhere. I was called “beanpole” and “string bean,” and I knew that’s what I looked like. A flat chest, no hips, and a brain; that’s what I had. That really wasn’t much for a fourteen-year-old to work with, I thought, as I absent-mindedly wandered from my history class to the gym. Another
scholarship: related to money given to support a student’s education
agile: nimble, quick
Unit 1 • The Choices We Make • Part 1: The Scholarship Jacket 5
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