Lesson 19: Seen and Unseen: Part 10

Since students will soon be transitioning to Investigation 2 of this unit, introduce that Essential Question.

Have students form pairs to discuss the following questions.

• Say: How can readers evaluate words and images for accuracy, perspective, and ethical use? Before you talk with your partner, I’m going to show you what a strong response sounds like. You don’t need to copy this—just notice how it defines the term and gives an example.

Model Response (Display or Read Aloud):

• Say: Evaluating a text for accuracy means checking whether it presents true, factual information. We can do this by comparing a text with the sources that it uses and by corroborating details between one text and another.

Say these Directions: With a partner, discuss the following aspects of the question:

• Ask: What does ethical use mean when we are dealing with true stories about real people?

  • Ethical use means that the work shows people in a fair and honest light without exaggerating or misleading. It also means that authors seek permission, when possible, from the people whose stories they are sharing.

• Ask: How have we already evaluated the perspective of texts in Investigation 1?

  • In Investigation 1, we discussed and wrote about the limitations of the different photographers’ perspectives. For example, we learned that Ansel Adams had the specific goal of helping Japanese Americans resettle after their time in the camps, and so he took photos that showed them as happy, hardworking, and resilient.

Reconvene the class and have volunteers briefly share their responses. Offer concise definitions or reminders of any unfamiliar terms (e.g., ethical). Assure the class that the meaning of the Essential Question and its relevance to Seen and Unseen will be explored in much greater depth over the next several lessons.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: Today, we are focusing primarily on the craft of putting together an illustrated book. Craft refers to the artistic and technical decisions that shape the book’s tone and perspective. As we do this, we can also be thinking about questions of ethics and accuracy and how craft decisions can make it easier or harder to tell an accurate story in an ethical way.

Cloze Vocabulary

Target words: incarceration, incarcerated, resettlement, resettle, removal

Introduce Activity: Display or project each sentence and the word bank. Explain that students will complete each sentence, considering their knowledge of the vocabulary and the context of the sentence. 

Complete Sentences: Ask students to work in partnerships to complete each sentence.

Word Bank: incarceration, incarcerated, resettlement, resettle, removal

1. Japanese Americans who had been in the camps faced difficulties as they tried to ____ in communities further inland or on the East Coast.

2. The forced ____ of Japanese Americans from their homes is now seen as a serious injustice.

3. In most parts of the U.S., a person may be held briefly without criminal charges but cannot be ____ for more than a few days unless charged with a crime.

4. The government eventually acknowledged that the ____ of entire families at Manzanar and other camps was a serious wrong.

5. Manzanar’s administrator asked Ansel Adams to help encourage the public’s cooperation in the ____ of prisoners.

Answer Key: 1. resettle, 2. removal, 3. incarcerated, 4. incarceration, 5. resettlement

Review Responses: Review responses as a whole group and discuss why each word best completes the sentence.

• Ask: Why does this word fit?

1. Resettle fits because it’s the verb that means to move to a new place.

2. Removal fits here because the sentence describes people being taken away from a place against their will.

3. Incarcerated fits because the word describes what happens to a person who is “held” on criminal charges.

4. Incarceration is the right word here because that is what happened to the families at Manzanar and other internment camps.

5. Resettlement fits here because it is the process that the prisoners went through after they were released.

Connection to Today’s Learning

• Say: The start of this investigation gives us a chance to review what we’ve learned from Seen and Unseen as we examine the book in a new light. The terms used to describe Japanese American incarceration and its aftermath will be important to our discussion.

Part A: Model Annotating for Craft (RI.7.6, RI.7.7) (10 minutes)

Briefly review the main findings of Investigation 1. Remind students how Lange, Miyatake, and Adams documented life in the camps and how, through careful reading and analysis, they distinguished what was visible vs. hidden in each photographer’s work.

Then, offer students a prompt to use in the following annotation exercise.

• Say: Identify the point of view in each modality (text, photograph, illustration). How does each perspective influence what is included or left out? Where do the perspectives align, and where do they differ?

Tell students that they will annotate a selected page spread from Seen and Unseen using a multimodal craft lens (text, illustration, photography) to identify how author and illustrator choices shape tone, emotion, and perspective. Define multimodal as needed.

Connect to the Essential Question.

• Ask: How do words, images, and illustrations work together to tell someone’s story? What responsibilities does a storyteller have when portraying lived experiences?

As they answer, invite them to use and build upon their ideas from the Launch discussion.

Introduce the Craft Lens: Students will look closely at text, photographs, and illustrations to understand how choices in framing, sequencing, captions, and visual emphasis shape meaning.

Think-Aloud Modeling

Use the Think-Aloud Modeling protocol to model the annotation process for students:

1. Project a short page spread (one to two pages) from Seen and Unseen.

2. Model annotating the text: identify specific words or phrases that convey emotional tone, reveal bias, or reflect perspective.

3. Model annotating a photograph: note the framing, focus, and subjects, with close attention to what is included and excluded.

4. Model annotating illustration: note the style, along with any exaggeration or emphasis, and comment on how it shapes the reader’s perception of the subject.

An annotation of the spread on pp. 100–101 might be narrated as follows.

• Say: The photograph shows someone in the camp cutting barbed wire with a guard tower in the background. The illustration emphasizes the barbed wire and the sky. Together with the text, we feel tension and restriction, but also hope. This choice emphasizes confinement but doesn’t show moments of play or joy.

• Say: Different parts of the spread show contrasting perspectives on camp life and the prisoners’ future. The photograph shows confinement; the illustration emphasizes hope. These points of view highlight different aspects of camp life, which affect what the viewer understands about daily experiences.

Provide students with a confidence continuum (i.e., 1–5). As needed, model how to demonstrate a level of confidence using the continuum.

Part B: Annotate for Craft (RI.7.6, RI.7.7, W.7.2) (20 minutes)

Now, have students choose a page spread from Seen and Unseen that contains a mixture of printed text, photographs, and illustrations. Ask them to annotate it using the Craft Lens with these guiding prompts:

Text: How do word choice, sequencing, or captions shape tone and emotion?

Photography: What is included, what is left out, and what perspective is emphasized?

Illustration: How does style or emphasis highlight or obscure experiences?

Have them record annotations on sticky notes or on a separate sheet of paper.

Turn and Talk

Have students use the turn-and-talk routine to share their annotations with a partner or small group.

• Say: Use your sticky notes or a small chart to highlight patterns you noticed across text, photos, and illustrations. Show your visual thinking as you explain your observations to your partner or group.

Instruct students to focus their discussion on the following questions:

• Ask: What patterns do you notice across text, illustration, and photography?

  • I notice that the tone of the photos is sometimes ambiguous, and it would be hard to tell without context whether they are depicting people who are suffering or just people who are working hard. The illustrations and text are often more direct about this by showing, or simply stating, what a difficult time the prisoners had.

• Ask: How do these choices affect what we see and what remains hidden?

  • The text and illustrations help to make a coherent story from the photos by giving us more chances to see the hardships that the prisoners faced. They make sure that we can “see” the effects of incarceration even when the photos might show smiling faces or activities like sports.

• Ask: What responsibilities do authors/illustrators have in shaping understanding?

  • Authors and illustrators have a responsibility to help readers make sense of the primary sources they use. So in this case, Partridge and Tamaki worked to ensure that we would understand the incarceration policy as a serious injustice and the photos as limited evidence of what incarceration was really like.

Reconvene the class and discuss students’ annotations as a larger group.

• Say: Compare the perspectives in text, photographs, and illustrations. How do differences in perspective change what we learn about this person’s experience?

Quick Write

Have students write one to two sentences in response to the following prompt:

Based on today’s annotations, what is one way Partridge and Tamaki use text, illustration, and photography together to convey emotion?

• Optional Sentence Frame:

  • “One way the perspectives in the text, photographs, or illustrations differ is _______, which changes how we understand _______.”

    • One way the perspectives in the text, photographs, or illustrations differ is that the illustrations have a more obvious emotional tone than the photos. This helps us understand that the photos were limited in what they could reveal about the true harshness of life in the camps.

Collect the responses as formative data.

Have students reread pp. 12–15 of Seen and Unseen and be prepared to discuss these pages’ contents and word choice in the next lesson.