Lesson 27: Seen and Unseen: Part 13

Remind students of the work they have done so far in comparing details and perspectives from multiple primary and secondary sources, and that responsible witnessing involves noting what is included and what is missing. Then, have students use a turn-and-talk routine to revisit the Essential Question. Encourage them to draw on specific, concrete examples from their annotations.

Turn and Talk

Say these Directions: Review the Essential Question: How can readers evaluate words and images for accuracy, perspective, and ethical use? Then use the Turn and Talk routine to discuss your ideas with a partner.

• Ask: How can seeing multiple kinds of evidence (words, photos, illustrations) help us understand a story more fully?

  • Seeing the text, photo, and illustration on pp. 24–25 helped me to understand that what the speaker described—being treated as “only a number”—was something that happened to many people, like the Mochida family in the photograph. The photo and illustration also brought home the fact that many of the prisoners were children who spent formative years of their lives in the camps.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Today is the last of our “reading days,” when our focus has been on annotating survivor stories and thinking about the craft decisions made by the author and illustrator of Seen and Unseen. We will continue looking for connections among textual and visual media and for ways in which the different perspectives—of the survivors, the photographers, and the author and illustrator—come through in how they present their evidence.

• Say: As we analyze these pages, remember that both words and images can shape how we understand events—sometimes by showing details clearly, and sometimes by leaving important things out.

Students will build word families by adding prefixes and suffixes to word roots using the matrix below.

Word Matrix

Say these Directions: Look at the table below. The left column contains prefixes, the middle column contains a root word: viv (meaning “to live”), and the right column contains suffixes. Select word parts from the columns to create words. Then use a dictionary to verify their meaning.

For survivor (root: viv = “live”):

Share Words: Prompt students to share some of the words they created and what they think they might mean. 

Discuss Patterns: Prompt students to discuss patterns and explain meanings: 

• Ask: How do the prefixes re- (again) and sur- (over, beyond) change the meaning?

  • Re- means “again,” so to revivify someone or something is made to live again. Sur- means “over” or “beyond”; survival means living beyond a problem or struggle that one is facing.

• Ask: How do the suffixes change the meaning?

  • The different suffixes tell us whether we are looking at a verb, a noun, or an adjective. The suffix -al makes nouns out of actions or processes, like refusal or denial. The suffixes -id and -ial create adjectives: a jungle is a humid place, and a desert is an arid one. The suffix -ify makes a verb.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Throughout this unit, we have seen the word survivor used in various contexts. Engaging with the word in terms of roots and affixes can help us keep its meaning fresh in our minds while giving us tools to understand unfamiliar words.

Part A: Model Image Analysis (RI.7.7, RI.7.6) (10 minutes)

Display pp. 94–97 from Seen and Unseen. Read the quote from a survivor (p. 97) while calling students’ attention to the photographs, as well as the author’s and illustrator’s choices for other visual and textual elements on the pages.

Model Craft Lens annotation for students:

• Text: Highlight words or phrases that convey emotional tone, bias, or perspective.

• Photography: Note framing, perspective, and subjects included/excluded.

• Illustration: Observe style, emphasis, or exaggeration affecting perception.

• Omissions/Hidden Experiences: Identify what is missing or unclear.

Use the Think-Aloud routine to model analysis of how the elements combine to produce more than the sum of their parts. Your analysis might sound like this:

• Say: The photographs show children playing and several smiling faces, visually suggesting that people were happy and relaxed. The drawing elements focus on barbed wire and armed guards, visually suggesting confinement and repression. The testimony “Everything in a picture is not necessarily true” draws our attention to the contrast between what the photos are designed to show and what the reality might be. The author’s text reinforces the contrast: “They would not let him see their sadness or anger. The prisoners smiled for his camera. They were under enormous pressure to prove they were ‘good citizens.’”

Part B: Analyze Text and Images (RI.7.6, RI.7.7, W.7.2) (20 minutes)

Students will annotate pages from Seen and Unseen and share their annotations with a partner using the Turn and Talk Routine. Encourage students to write and share an annotation from each of the categories below.

Turn and Talk

Say these Directions: Annotate pp. 10–12 from Seen and Unseen. Look for an example for each of the categories below. Then, use the Turn and Talk routine to share your annotations with a partner.

• Text: What tone, perspective, or voice is conveyed?

• Photography: What is emphasized or omitted?

• Illustration: How does the visual style shape meaning?

• Omissions/Hidden Experiences: What is missing?

Reconvene the class to discuss the broader themes and patterns that emerge from students’ individual analyses. Encourage students to draw on examples from their annotations as they respond to the following questions:

• Ask: What patterns and contrasts do the text, illustration, and photography reveal?

  • On pp. 10–11, the photo and illustration contrast in a few major ways. The American flag is in the photo on p. 10, and a red circle reminiscent of the Japanese “rising sun” is on p. 11. On p. 10, a group of children, some of whom appear to be Asian American and may be Japanese American, say the Pledge of Allegiance together. On p. 11, a worried Issei father talks to his young Nisei son, which—along with the text “He was wrong”—indicates vulnerability of the child and reassurance from his father.

Elicit whether any students know what the flag of Japan looks like. Then explain that the flag of Japan for hundreds of years has had a red circle, like a sun, on a white background.

• Ask: On pages 10–11, one side shows a photograph with an American flag. The other side has a red circle on a white background. What does this visual layout suggest before you even read the words?

  • On one side, Japanese American children look like they are saying the Pledge of Allegiance with the American flag. The other side, with the illustration, looks like the Japanese flag. Maybe it will be about Japanese Americans feeling both American and Japanese, or maybe it will be that they feel American but others only see them as Japanese.

• Ask: How do the author’s and illustrator’s choices influence our understanding of Japanese Americans?

  • These choices show how Japanese Americans—especially Nisei children— became much more isolated as a result of wartime policies. The photo on p. 10 suggests that Nisei children were becoming part of a multicultural United States (despite the discrimination illustrated on previous pages). On p. 11, the father and son are surrounded by negative space and a large shadow. They are isolated visually with darkness threatening, which symbolizes how the forced removal and incarceration policy will make them live in isolation and with a sense of threat.

• Ask: What is not shown, or “unseen,” on pp. 10–11? Why is it omitted?

  • These pages do not directly illustrate everyday discrimination against Japanese Americans or how daily life was experienced in the camps. Previous pages illustrate everyday discrimination, so these pages can focus on the moment of forced removal. Focusing on the moment of forced removal also leaves the details of actual incarceration as “unknown” to the reader, like it would have been for the people experiencing that moment.

• Ask: On page 52, Tamaki illustrates the Miyatake family's apartment with brightly colored maps, curtains, decorations — against beige walls and a bare ceiling lamp. What is the illustration showing about how the Miyatakes responded to incarceration?

  • The Miyatake family was put in a small room in an apartment that had been built quickly as a prison to hold a lot of people. There was probably nothing nice or decorative about it. The illustration shows the light hanging from chains but also how the family might have made it their own as much as they could with posters, bright fabric, and a Christmas tree.

Have students write a short response to the prompt. Collect the response as formative data.

Quick Write

Say these Directions: Write write two-to-three sentences in response to the following question:

• What is one thing that remains hidden or unclear in the survivor story you analyzed? How does considering omissions help you bear witness responsibly?

  • One thing that isn’t clear from pp. 10–11 is whether the Nisei were treated differently from the Issei in terms of incarceration. The quote “He was wrong” suggests that citizenship made no difference, but I would want to find out more to avoid making assumptions here. Recognizing that I can’t be sure of this detail from the text alone helps me to be responsible in my interpretation.

Instruct students to review their annotations from Lessons 24–27 in order to prepare for in-class writing in the next lesson.