Name________________________
Chapter Assignments for Mr. Nannemann’s Reading Group
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord
Please answer vocabulary definitions in your Reading Group notebook for future
reference and homework assignments.
You can use a dictionary if you like, but put as much of the definition as possible
in your own words. At the end of each chapter you are to answer the questions.
You must answer in complete sentences.
Chapter 1:
Vocabulary
patriarch
scowled
irate
relented
1. What is your opinion of the name Bandit chose?
2. On a blank piece of paper, draw a picture of the New Year’s celebration.
Include the feast, storytelling, and other details. Use lots of color!
Chapter 2:
Vocabulary
writhed
mocking
ignorant
1. Why is Mother so nervous?
2. Tell about a time you got lost. How did you feel? How were you found?
Chapter 3:
Vocabulary
obediently
ambassador
escapade
1. How did you feel on your first day of school? What is your first memory of
school?
2. What would you do if you went to a school and you didn’t speak the same
language as the other children? How could you communicate?
Chapter 4:
Vocabulary
protruded
sidling
odious
ordeal
1. Why does Shirley feel so lonely?
2. Pretend you are Shirley and you just finished your first piano lesson – how
do you feel?
Chapter 5:
Vocabulary
regale
formidable
persuasive
1. Why didn’t the other kids want Shirley on their team?
2. Why do you think the author wrote the part about Shirley playing stickball
and getting on base for the first time in such a humorous way?
Chapter 6:
Vocabulary
wayward
civics
sharecropper
1. Pick one of you role models, compare and contrast to Jackie Robinson.
2. Explain the last paragraph of the chapter in your own words.
Chapter 7:
Vocabulary
wavered
sultry
tyranny
1. Why do you think none of the kids wanted to play stickball on the last day
of school, even though their vacation plans hadn’t begun yet?
2. Pretend you are Shirley and write one paragraph in which you try to
persuade your parents to take care of the apartment for the Senora.
Chapter 8:
Vocabulary
acquiring
infamous
ingenuity
1. Shirley has been doing a lot of work lately – caring for the house and
Toscanini. Do you think it makes her feel proud to take on responsibility?
2. Draw a picture of the furnace room as it appears in Shirley’s imagination.
Include lots of detail and color.
Chapter 9:
Vocabulary
concoction
recitation
indistinguishable
counterfeit
1. What do you think of Emily Levy? Use adjectives to describe her. Would
you want her for a friend?
2. Why did Shirley feel so bad about deceiving her parents?
Chapter 10:
Vocabulary
mortal
phenomenon
walloping
1. Do you think Tommy is hiding his true feelings for the Dodgers?
2. Why do you think listening to baseball games broadcast on the radio is so
important to Shirley and her friends?
Chapter 11:
Vocabulary
commemorate
longevity
decreed
1. What do you think the story of the filial daughter means?
2. Do you think Shirley and her parents will ever see the rest of their
clansmen?
Chapter 12:
Vocabulary
swaggering
swoon
futility
1. Who do you think most deserved to be the representative at the
assembly?
What do you predict the year 1948 will have in store for Shirley?
A. Background
For almost 100 years, African-American players were prevented from playing Major
League Baseball simply because of their skin color. In order to play the game, they
formed their own teams - known collectively as the Negro leagues. The heyday of the
Negro leagues was from the 1920s through the late 1940s when Jackie Robinson broke
the modern-day color barrier by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Negro leagues
continued until 1960 when Baseball became completely integrated. Negro league
players endured what some considered adverse conditions in order to play the game
they loved.
B. Additional Vocabulary
Abolish
Activist
Barnstorm
Civil Rights
Color Barrier
Contract
Courage
Demise
Discrimination
Expansion
Integration
Integrity
Jim Crow laws
Negro leagues
Perseverance
Prejudice
Racism
Rookie
Segregation
Slavery
Teacher Guide
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http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/in/intg.html
CyberGuide by Susan D. Murphy
o
Introduction
This supplemental CyberGuide for Betty Bao Lord's book, In the
Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, was developed as part of
the Schools of California Online Resources (SCORE) Project,
funded by the California Technology Assistance Program (CTAP)
and the California County Superintendents Educational Services
Association (CCSESA).
Disclaimer: The links here have been scrutinized for their grade
and age appropriateness; however, contents of links on the web
change continuously. It is advisable that teachers review all links
before introducing CyberGuides to students.
During this unit for classes in grades 4 and 5, students will:
Use the Internet to investigate stickball in Brooklyn and write
a friendly letter as Shirley Temple Wong, the heroine of the
book.
Read about Chinese horoscopes.
Write a persuasive essay.
Read about the life of Jackie Robinson.
Compare and contrast Robinson hardships with the
hardships faced by the heroine of the book.
Create a time line of their families' lives from 1940-1997,
after studying an interactive time line of Jackie Robinson's
life.
Write and publish a review of the book on the Internet.
These activities have been created for use in a classroom or media
center with one computer being used by an individual or group of
students in rotation. Each of these activities is self-contained and
the classroom teacher may select any or all for a class to do.
At the end of this unit, the students should have a more detailed
grasp of the life of a Chinese immigrant to New York in 1947, a
better understanding of the racial disharmony that was rampant in
society in those days, and a better understanding of their families'
paths to the present.
Language Arts Content Standards
[Examples for Grades 4 and 5]
As a result of this unit students will:
GRADE 4
Identify patterns in informational text, eg., cause and effect,
comparison/contrast [Reading 2.1]
Determine causes of character's actions [Reading 3.3]
Compare and contrasting characters from different cultures
[Reading 2.5]
Locate information in texts by using organizational features
[Writing 1.6]
Select focus and point of view, create multiparagraph
compositions, quote and paraphrase text. [Writing Strategy
Standards 1.1, 1.2, 1.5
Write reponses to literature [Writing 2.2]
GRADE 5
Identify main problem or conflist of plot; understand theme
[Reading 3.2 and 3.4]
Use organizational features of text to find information
[Writing 1.3]
Write a persuasive composition [Writing 2.4]
Write an informational report [Writing 2.3]
Write responses to literature [Writing 2.2]
Description of Materials, Activities and
Web sites
Class set of In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by
Betty Bao Lord
At least one classroom computer with Internet access
Butcher paper or other long strips of paper for creating the
family time lines, Activity 4
Student Activity 1: Writing a Friendly Letter as a Response to
Literature
In this activity, students will :
•
•
•
•
•
Explore an interactive map of Brooklyn to locate places mentioned in the
story.
View photographs of neighborhood stickball games and read about
stickball.
Visit a site that shows typical Brooklyn houses.
Look at the New York skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge (c. 1940).
Write a friendly letter as Shirley Temple Wong to Fourth Cousin in China,
describing her new life, her neighborhood, her friends and their games of
stickball.
Photographs of Brooklyn NY, 1998
Stickball
URL: http://www.streetplay.com/stickball/
Comments: This is the official Website for stickball. It gives a description
of the game and has photos and results from recent matches.
View from Brooklyn Bridge Photo
URL: http://www.mcny.org/mcny/s3.jpg
Student Activity 2: Writing a Persuasive Essay
In this activity, students visit a Website that describes the Chinese
horoscope. Each student will read about the personality traits for the
year she or he was born in. After first using a spider map form to
organize their ideas, students will then write a persuasive essay
agreeing or disagreeing with the horoscope descriptions of
themselves.
Chinese Calendar
URL: http://found.cs.nyu.edu/liaos/calendar.html
Comments: This is a fun, colorful site by a Taiwanese student in New
York City.
Chinese Horoscope Fun Page
URL: http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/Baox/horoscope/fun.html
Comments: An easy to use, easily read site on Chinese horoscopes.
Graphic Organizer: Spider Map
URL: http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/actbank/sspider.htm
Compare/Contrast
This is a compare/contrast organizer. You may use it as an example to make
your own or print it out and use it just as it is.
Name__________________________
Student Activity 3: Writing a Compare and Contrast Essay as
an Information Report
Students will visit two Internet sites and read brief articles about
Jackie Robinson's life. They may listen to a radio interview with
Jackie Robinson done two days after his election to the Baseball Hall
of Fame. Using a compare/contrast table, they will organize
information about Jackie Robinson and Shirley, and the attitudes
each expressed while facing hardships in being accepted by the
people of New York. They will then use the information from the table
to write a paper comparing the characters of Shirley and Jackie
Robinson.
ESPN's The Jackie Robinson Story
URL: http://www.bayou.com/~brooklyn/part2.html
Comments: This is a concise synopsis of Jackie Robinson's entry
into major league baseball. Some of the language may be difficult for
less experienced readers, but if children work in groups, they can
help each other understand the information.
Graphic Organizer: Compare/Contrast Table
URL: http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/actbank/scomp.htm
Student Activity 4: Creating a Timeline
Students will visit the Dodgers homepage time line of Jackie
Robinson's life. After carefully studying the sequence of events in
Mr. Robinson's life, they will prepare interview questions to ask their
parents, grandparents, other relatives or family friends to find out
what was happening in their own families during Jackie Robinson's
life.They will create time lines of their own families for the era from
1940 to the year of their birth for a classroom display.
Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights 1860s-1960s
URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/jrhtml/
Student Activity 5: Writing a Book Review as an Information
Report
After viewing several student-written reviews of books, students will
write reviews of In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. The
teacher will select four or five of the best reviews to submit to the
website for publication.
Book Nook
URL: http://www.blockisland.com/booknook/
Comments: This site publishes hundreds of student-written book
reports.
Performance Standards
Student rubrics are at the end of each student activity page.
Notes From the Teacher/Writer of This
CyberGuide
This unit is currently being field tested. I have found with the previous
CyberGuides I have written that it expedites matters to have student web
links Bookmarked before the lesson. I have also included other sites of
interest, if you or your students wish to do further research in some of the
areas covered within the unit.
Museum of the City of New York
URL: http://www.mcny.org/
CHINESE NEW YEAR
Chinese New Year starts with the New Moon on the first day of the new year and
ends on the full moon 15 days later. The 15th day of the new year is called the
Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children
carrying lanterns in a parade.
The Chinese calendar is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements.
The lunar cycle is about 29.5 days. In order to "catch up" with the solar calendar
the Chinese insert an extra month once every few years (seven years out of a
19-yearcycle). This is the same as adding an extra day on leap year. This is why,
according to the solar calendar, the Chinese New Year falls on a different date
each year.
New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are celebrated as a family affair, a time of
reunion and thanksgiving. The celebration was traditionally highlighted with a
religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the
household and the family ancestors.
The sacrifice to the ancestors, the most vital of all the rituals, united the living
members with those who had passed away. Departed relatives are remembered
with great respect because they were responsible for laying the foundations for
the fortune and glory of the family.
The presence of the ancestors is acknowledged on New Year's Eve with a dinner
arranged for them at the family banquet table. The spirits of the ancestors,
together with the living, celebrate the onset of the New Year as one great
community. The communal feast called "surrounding the stove" or weilu. It
symbolizes family unity and honors the past and present generations.
The Lunar Calendar
Prior to adoption of the Western solar calendar system, China exclusively
followed a lunar calendar in determining the times of planting, harvesting, and
festival occasions. Though today people in China use the western calendar for
most practical matters of daily life, the old system still serves as the basis for
determining numerous seasonal holidays. This coexistence of two calendar
systems has long been accepted by the people of China.
A lunar month is determined by the period required for the moon to complete its
full phasic cycle of 29 and a half days, a standard that makes the lunar year a full
11 days shorter than its solar counterpart. This difference is made up every 19
years by the addition of seven lunar months. The 12 lunar months are further
divided into 24 solar divisions distinguished by the four seasons and times of
heat and cold, all bearing close relationship to the yearly cycle of agricultural
work.
The traditional Chinese calendar divides the year into 24 solar divisions with one
chieh or "segment" and one chi or "climate" in each of the twelve months. This
system developed as a way of marking the significant seasons and climate
changes during the farmers' yearly cycle of work, from sowing and tilling to the
final harvest.
The 24 solar divisions begin with the "Start of
Spring," which is followed in turn by "Rain Water,"
when preparations for planting are made; "Excited
Insects," a time of spring thunder and the stirring of
new life; the spring equinox; "Clear and Bright,"
marked by the howling of southeasterly winds; and
"Grain Rains," reminding the farmers that the
seasonal downpours are beginning. The summer
divisions begin with "Start of Summer"; "Grain Fills,"
when the grain swells on the stalks; "Grain in Ear,"
marking the time of harvest; the summer solstice;
and "Slight Heat" and "Great Heat," when the
warmth of summer becomes increasingly more oppressive.
The summer divisions are followed in turn by the "Start of Autumn," the day on
which the temperature begins to cool; "White Dew," when the moisture congeals to
frost; the autumnal equinox, the true start of the fall season; and with "Cold Dew"
and " Frost Descends," the weather turns cold as winter nears. The "Start of
Winter," is followed by "Light Snow" and "Heavy Snow," which mark the beginning
of deep winter. The next division in the year, winter solstice, is a day of deep
significance, and is celebrated in Taiwan by eating a sweet dumpling soup called
tang yuan to fortify the body in preparation for the biting frost of "Little Cold" and
"Severe Cold," the final two divisions of the cycle before beginning the new year.