Curriculum  /  ELA  /  6th Grade  /  Unit 11: Declaring Identity: Being Jazz (2020)  /  Lesson 18

Declaring Identity: Being Jazz (2020)

Lesson 18
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ELA

Unit 11

6th Grade

Lesson 18 of 28

Objective

Draw conclusions about Jazz’s character based on the way she responds to challenges in her own life and the injustice she sees around her.

Readings and Materials

  • Book: Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen by Jazz Jennings  pp. 155 – 167

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Target Task

Writing Prompt

Why does Jazz most likely include the story of Angeline (pages 165–167)? What does Jazz’s response reveal about her character? Support your answer with specific evidence from the text.

Key Questions

  • Why is Jazz’s children’s book so important to her? Support your answer with specific evidence from the text.

  • How does Jazz respond to being called “It” by her classmates? What does this reveal about her character? Support your answer with specific evidence from the text.

  • In what ways is Jazz’s life different from other trans kids? Provide at least two examples from the text and support those ideas with specific evidence.

  • Discussion: What does Jazz’s story reveal about the impact young people can have on the world?

Lesson Guidance

Standard and Literary Concepts

  • Standard 1 is the foundation of all other standards. Students practice it every day when they provide evidence from the text to support their ideas. The focus of this standard in middle school is to make sure that students are drawing logical conclusions from the text and providing the strongest evidence to support those conclusions. This lesson is a good opportunity to use show-call to have students assess whether the evidence a classmate has chosen follows logically from their idea and is the strongest possible evidence available in the text.
  • Our focus today is on standard one because it allows students the opportunity to think about Jazz’s life with a wider lens than might be possible with a more focused standard.

Notes

  • Today’s reading discusses suicide. This is an especially sensitive topic, particularly as rates of teenage suicide have increased significantly over the last decades. You may wish to give your school social worker/psychologist a heads up that this topic will be discussed today.
  • If time allows, show students a copy of Jazz’s children’s book I Am Jazz. Ask students whether they think this book is “controversial.”

Homework

  • Read Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, pages 169–176.

Common Core Standards

  • RI.6.1 — Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Next

Identify narrator Jazz’s point of view and how it is conveyed in Being Jazz.

Lesson 19
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Lesson Map

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