Lesson 3: Building Background Knowledge: Understanding Bicultural Identities and Experiences, Part 2

In Lesson 1, students compared poetry and prose and discussed duality. Lesson 2 provided a deeper dive into “Fish Checks,” helping students understand how feeling different can bring shame or pride. This lesson expands those ideas with a close examination of the poem “Two,” before pairing it with a nonfiction article about bicultural identity across generations. To begin, have students take out their Homework Journals and sit with a partner.

Think-Pair-Share

Say these Directions: Open your Journal to your notes on the poem, “Two.” Share ideas with your partner in response to the prompt:

• Ask: Which line from “Two” best demonstrates the poet’s feeling that she is split between two worlds, and what does that line reveal about one of her selves?

  • The line “I swim in a river of white skin” shows the poet’s American school world. It reveals that she feels surrounded by people who do not look like her, and the word swim makes that world feel like work instead of ease.

Connection to Today's Learning:

• Say: This work matters because your Performance Task asks you to explain how a poem reveals an important connection through imagery or symbolism. Now you will study how LaRocca’s exact word choices and line breaks express a complex emotion.

Guide students through completing a 3-column chart for the two lines of the poem, “Two.” Fill in the chunks and elicit the meaning and function from students. Model completing the other columns for each chunk.

Language Study

Say these Directions: Use a 3-column chart to analyze the following lines. Use the left column for noting important word choice, the middle column for summarizing meaning and the right column for explaining the function of the words in the poetry.

Display page 1 and direct students to read the lines beginning with “I swim in a river…” and ending with “…black hair.”

“...I swim in a river of white skin”

“I float in a sea of brown skin and black hair…” (p. 1)

• Say: These two lines are the key to today’s work. We are going to slow down and study how a poet can compress a huge feeling into just a few words, so that when we compare the poem to the article, we can explain not just what each text says, but how each text says it.

Teach: Reading Connotation and Compression

• Ask: How does the contrast between swim and float shape the tone of these lines?

  • The contrast changes the tone because swim sounds effortful and tense, but float sounds calm and supported. That makes the poet’s two worlds feel emotionally different even before the poem explains anything else.

• Ask: How do the images of a river and a sea do work that a plain sentence could not do?

  • The images make the people around the poet feel large and surrounding, almost like water on every side. That helps readers feel how strong each setting is around her instead of just being told she is in two groups.

• Ask: How do the line breaks affect how you read the poem?

  • The line breaks slow me down, which helps me feel the contrast between the two worlds.

• Say: The line breaks and symbolic language are part of poetic compression: when a small number of words and lines portray a much bigger emotional experience. To best understand a poem, think about both the literal meaning and the connotation of each word.

Connection to Today's Learning:

• Say: Now that you have unpacked how the poem sounds and feels, you will read the article to trace how nonfiction explains the same kind of in-between experience across time.

Students read the article in pairs, pausing after the sections focused on earlier generations and on the present day. Next, they will compare how the article explains that idea differently from how the poem makes readers feel it.

Part A: Tracking a Central Idea Across Time (RI.7.2, RI.7.3, RI.7.4) (15 minutes)

Guide students in tracing a central idea across sections by comparing past and present.

Group Accountability Share

Say these Directions: As you read “Youth: Bicultural Identity: Then & Now,” look for how the author shows both change and continuity. In the first section, notice what bicultural identity looked like for earlier generations. In the later section, notice what has shifted and what has persisted for her generation. Be ready to agree on one central idea sentence with your partner.

Teach: Tracing Central Idea Across Sections

• Say: A central idea is not just a topic, such as “bicultural identity” in this article. The central idea is what the author wants us to understand about that topic.

• Say: We can track the article across its sections by asking: “What does the author show about the past, and what does the author show about the present?”

• Say: When both sections connect to the same message, we can state a central idea. The title phrase Then & Now already tells us that the author will compare time periods, so we should expect the central idea to include both change and continuity. We should use text landmarks to determine what period the author is talking about in each paragraph and the impact of each idea. That analysis helps us explain how the author develops a central idea across the whole article.

Give students time to read the article and briefly discuss with their partners. Upon completion, reconvene the class and lead a whole-group discussion.

• Ask: What central idea does the article develop about bicultural identity across generations?

  • The article develops the idea that bicultural identity changes with time, but the feeling of living between cultures does not disappear. In the section about earlier generations, the author shows more pressure to choose one side. Later, in the section about young people now, the author shows that students may express both cultures more openly, but they still move between different expectations.

• Ask: How does the title phrase Then & Now shape your understanding of the article before and during reading?

  • The title tells me that the author is going to compare the past with the present. It helps me look for what changed and what stayed the same, which leads me toward the article’s main idea.

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: Comparing Two Ways of Showing Duality (RI.7.9) (15 minutes)

Guide students in comparing texts using a Venn diagram to analyze shared ideas and differences in form and emphasis.

Think-Pair-Share

Say these Directions: With your partner, use the Venn diagram to compare how the poem and the article present living between two worlds. Put details from “Two” on the left and details from “Then and Now” on the right. Use the middle column for details and ideas shared between both texts.

Teach: Comparing Form, Evidence, and Emphasis

Guide student pairs to discuss the questions and take notes on the Venn diagram. When students have completed their diagrams, reconvene the class and lead a whole-group discussion. Encourage students to include the words connotation, compression, symbol, and bicultural in their responses.

• Say: When we compare these two texts, we are not just looking for the same topic. We are asking how each author shapes the reader’s understanding. Our comparison should name the shared idea and then discuss differences in form and emphasis.

• Ask: What idea appears in both texts, and how does each author shape that idea differently?

  • Both texts show that living between two cultures can make a person feel pulled in different directions. LaRocca shapes that idea through brief images, using symbols and connotative meaning to compress ideas, and line breaks that let readers feel the poet’s split identity. The article shapes the idea through explanation and examples across generations, which helps readers understand the bigger pattern beyond one person.

• Ask: How does the poem’s form let LaRocca show a feeling that the article explains more directly?

  • The poem lets LaRocca compress the feeling into a few vivid lines, so readers experience the contrast fast and emotionally. The article is more direct because it explains the bicultural experience in fuller sentences and gives context about how it has changed over time.

SAMPLE RESPONSE

If students struggle to focus their discussion, use this model: In the poem, LaRocca uses symbols such as river and sea, which allows poetic compression, a large message in a few words. Understanding the connotations, or symbolic meanings, of these words lets me feel the poet’s two worlds almost instantly. In the article, the author uses explanation and across-time examples, so I understand how the bicultural experience has shifted and persisted across generations. The poem emphasizes emotion and inner experience, while the article emphasizes explanation and context.

Students are ready to form an evidence-based position on whether duality feels like a burden, a gift, or both. Shift students from comparison to reflection by asking them to take a position and support it with evidence from both texts.

Quick Write

Say these Directions: Write a short reflection answering this question. Use at least one specific detail from “Two” and one specific detail from Bicultural Identity: Then & Now.

• Ask: Is duality a burden, a gift, or both? Explain your thinking with evidence from both texts.

  • I think duality is both a burden and a gift. In “Two,” LaRocca says that she “swim[s] in a river of white skin,” which makes her school world feel effortful and isolating. But in the next image, she “float[s] in a sea of brown skin and black hair,” which shows comfort and belonging in her Indian world. In the article, the author explains that, although bicultural young people today may express both identities more openly than earlier generations, young people still move between different expectations and feel pressure to fit into different spaces. That makes duality hard, but it also means that a person can carry more than one culture inside their identity. Together, the poem and article show that living between worlds can hurt, but it can also give a person more than one source of identity.

Instruct students to read “Give and Take” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in Red, White, and Whole (pp. 2–4) and to respond to the following questions in their Journal:

• What has Reha’s mother given up for her?

• What does Reha want for herself?