Introduction

In this Performance Assessment, students develop a claim about how a new text, Sherman Alexie's poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel,” relates to at least two of the texts they have analyzed in this module. This assessment provides students with the opportunity to practice the speaking and listening skills they have developed throughout this module as they demonstrate their learning by presenting their claim to a small group and then engaging in an evidence-based, student-facilitated, small-group discussion. Students prepare for this discussion by reviewing their completed Ideas Tracking Tools, Rhetorical Impact Tracking Tools, and notes and annotations. They will synthesize their thinking about the development of ideas, point of view, and purpose across all four module texts in relation to Alexie's poem to develop and support a claim with reasoning and evidence.

Detailed instructions for the two-lesson assessment follow the prompt. Each lesson is likely to last one class period. However, timing may vary depending on the scaffolding necessary to address student needs.

This Performance Assessment will be assessed using the relevant portions of the 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric.

Standards

Prompt

Over the course of this module, you have read “An Address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Audre Lorde's poem “From the House of Yemanjá,” W.E.B. Du Bois's “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” and Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Compromise Speech.” For this assessment, draw upon your analysis of these texts to develop and present a claim in a student-facilitated, small-group discussion to the following prompt:

Develop and present a claim about how Sherman Alexie's poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” relates to central ideas and/or points of view developed in at least two of the four texts in this module. Support your claim with evidence and reasoning.

To answer the prompt, review the texts as well as your notes, annotations, and any tracking tools from this module, including statements you have made about how the author of each text develops central ideas and advances his or her point of view. Identify two module texts to analyze in relation to Sherman Alexie's poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel,” and develop a claim about how Alexie's poem relates to these texts. Next, gather the most significant and relevant textual evidence to support your claim. Draw upon this preparation to synthesize and present the evidence and reasoning that support your claim to your small group. Be ready to clarify your position and respond thoughtfully to the challenges, questions, and perspectives of others in the student-facilitated, small-group discussion that follows each presentation.

High Performance Response

A High Performance Response should:

• Present a claim about how Alexie's poem relates to the central ideas and/or points of view developed in at least two other module texts (e.g., Alexie's poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” relates to the idea of double-consciousness that Du Bois develops in “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” and the idea of dual identity that Lorde develops in “From the House of Yemanjá.”).
• Support this claim with reasoning and evidence (see examples below).

A High Performance Response may include the following evidence:

• In “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” Du Bois develops the idea that African American identity is shaped by the experience of double-consciousness, which he describes as a feeling of “twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings” (par. 3). Du Bois explains that African Americans experience double-consciousness because they are forced to see themselves through “the eyes of others, or measure [their] soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (par. 3). Alexie's poem relates to Du Bois's idea of double-consciousness because it offers another example of how antagonistic race relations in America influence identity.
• In “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel,” Alexie paints a picture of American-Indian identity through his description of the characters that must be in the “great American Indian novel.” However, the images that Alexie uses to describe this identity are images of American Indians as seen solely through the eyes, or stereotypes, of the white world, as is evidenced by the fact that American Indians in the poem are described only in relation to the “white man” (lines 6, 8, 10, 30, 34) and “white woman,” (lines 22, 32, 33), and the American Indian “hero” is “half white” (line 3). As in Du Bois's description of double-consciousness, Alexie's poem's images are reflected from the viewpoint of a world that does not respect or understand American Indians. His repetition of “tragic” in his description of American Indian “features” and “food” (lines 1–2) relates to Du Bois's idea of a white world that looks on black people with “pity” (par. 3), because it suggests a view of American Indians as inferior or inadequate.
• In her poem “From the House of Yemanjá,” Lorde develops the idea of the speaker's dual identity through the contrasting imagery “I am the sun and moon” (lines 9, 31–32). She uses similar light and dark imagery to describe how the speaker experiences her dual identity as a struggle; she “bear[s] two women upon [her] back,” a “dark and rich” mother “hidden in the ivory hungers of the other/mother” (lines 11–14). The speaker's struggle to bear her own dual identity that she inherits from her mother can be understood as a description of how one woman experiences Du Bois's idea of double-consciousness.
• Alexie crafts similar images of dual identity in his poem when he explains that “White people must carry an Indian deep inside themselves” (lines 27–28) and “An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman” (line 33). Both Alexie and Lorde describe a body in which the identity that is not “white” (Alexie, line 4) or “pale” (Lorde, line 15) is “hidden” within or incorporated by the white body. Although both poems share this image, each author develops a different idea about the end result of this conflict. In “From the House of Yemanjá,” the speaker believes that two parts of her identity, “day and night,” cannot be “one” (lines 34, 36). Despite the conflict between the “dark” and “pale” parts of herself, these elements remain alive and whole in the speaker's identity. Alexie concludes his poem with the disturbing image that “In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written, /all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts” (lines 39–40). This image develops the idea that the American Indian identity cannot survive when it is appropriated or taken over by the white world. Alexie's poem offers a different image of the effects of double-consciousness and dual identity, which ends in the erasure of American-Indian people and culture.

Standard-Specific Demands of the Performance Assessment

This Module Performance Assessment requires students to meet numerous demands required by the ELA/Literacy Standards for grades 11–12.

Students engage deeply with the four focus texts of this module and their analysis and comparison of how each author uses rhetoric and word choice to develop and refine his or her point of view, purpose, and central idea. This provides a solid foundation for the demands of this assessment, in which students must place a new text in conversation with familiar texts to develop a claim.

This assessment requires that students analyze the development and interaction of central ideas (LAFS.1112.RI/RL.1.2) as well as an author's point of view and purpose (LAFS.1112.RI/RL.2.6) in informational texts and fiction in the grades 11–12 text complexity band. Students must be able to draw upon this analysis as they consider how multiple texts address similar themes or topics in order to build their understanding of these topics and ideas, or to compare the approaches the authors take (LAFS.K12.R.3.9).

The speaking and listening component of this assessment requires that students present their claims clearly and persuasively in an evidence-based, student-facilitated, small group discussion (LAFS.1112.SL.1.1), demonstrating command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage (LAFS.1112.L.1.1). To do this, students must come to this discussion prepared, having analyzed and reviewed the module texts and their related notes and annotations (LAFS.1112.SL.1.1.a). Students must explicitly draw upon this preparation by referring to evidence from these texts to support their claims and encouraging a thoughtful and well-reasoned exchange of ideas (LAFS.1112.SL.1.1.c). In the student-facilitated, small-group discussion that follows each student's presentation of his or her claims and evidence, students must respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of the issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and determine what additional evidence is required to strengthen their claims (LAFS.1112.SL.1.1.d).

This assessment requires that students not only present and engage in a dialogue about their own claims, but also engage critically with the claims of others. Students informally assess their peers' points of view, reasoning, and use of evidence, assessing the links among ideas in the context of discussion using the 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist. Students also assess their own presentations in accordance with the 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist.

Process

Students select two of the four texts they read in this module. Each student uses his or her notes, annotations, and tools to prepare a 5-minute presentation in which he or she makes a claim about how the central ideas or point of view of the two texts relate to Alexie's poem, selecting and organizing relevant and significant textual evidence to refine and support his or her claims. The presenting student then facilitates an evidence-based, student-facilitated, small-group discussion that gives all students an opportunity to demonstrate their speaking and listening skills. During their own presentation and the small-group discussions that follow each students' presentation, students express their own ideas clearly and persuasively and propel conversation by responding to and evaluating the claims and reasoning of others.

Students then informally assess their own presentations and the presentations of other students in their group, using 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist.

Lesson 1

Post and explain the Performance Assessment prompt for student reference. Instruct students to take out their annotated copies of “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” and reread and annotate the text while considering how the poem relates to the other module texts.

• Students read “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” and annotate the text for central ideas.

Next, instruct students to review their notes, annotations, and any tracking tools associated with the four texts that they analyzed in this module, paying particular attention to statements they have made about how the author of each text develops central ideas and advances his or her point of view.

Instruct students to prepare for the evidence-based discussion by developing several claims about how the new poem is related to at least two of the other module texts. Instruct students to support their claims using key evidence from Alexie's poem and two module texts of their choice.

For homework, instruct students to continue to develop or refine their claims and select the most significant and relevant supporting evidence for their claim.

Lesson 2

Instruct students to form pairs to share the claims and supporting evidence about which they are most unsure. Students work collaboratively in pairs to refine the claims in question, selecting more relevant evidence if necessary.

Instruct students to prepare their notes and annotated texts for the discussion. Distribute copies of the 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist. Explain that students will use this rubric informally to assess their group members' participation in and contributions to the discussion, as well as to assess their own presentations. Transition students into several small groups of three or four for evidence-based discussions. The discussions should proceed as follows:

1. Each student shares at least one claim about how Alexie's “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” relates to a central idea and/or point of view in two of the other module texts, using multiple pieces of text evidence for support. Other students assess the presenter using their 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist. These assessments will be handed in to the teacher at the end of class.
   • Students are familiar with this form of peer assessment, as they assessed their peers' speaking and listening skills in the discussion in 11.2.1 Lesson 24.
2. Other students engage the student presenter in discussion about the presenter's claims and evidence using their own claims and evidence as entry points.
3. Provide the following guiding questions for the student discussion groups once each student has presented:
   • Is each claim fully supported by text evidence? Why or why not?
   • What additional evidence could support the claims made?
   • What other claims could be made about how the poem and any of the module texts are related?

• Circulate during the small-group discussion, using the 11.2 Performance Assessment Text Analysis Rubric and Checklist to assess student discussion.

At the end of class, all students assess their own presentations using their 11.2 Performance Assessment Rubric and Checklist. Students hand in their self-assessments at the end of class.