You did it! 6e (Bordas) Propositions de références et d'extraits littéraires pour : Middle school is cool (part 1).

Bonjour ! 

Aujourd'hui, je vous propose des propositions d'extraits littéraires authentiques (à adapter selon les besoins de vos élèves) pour la 1re unité de You did it! 6e, intitulée : Middle school is cool. 

Vous pouvez :

* proposer ces extraits à vos élèves en fin d'année, pour faire le point sur ce qu'ils auront appris pendant cette année scolaire,

* proposer ces textes aux élèves qui avancent plus vite que d'autres et ont besoin d'être sollicités davantage,

* proposer ces textes dans un contexte de pédagogie différenciée.

N'hésitez pas à commenter cet article pour :

* me dire comment vous les utilisez,

* me demander d'autres types d'articles qui vous seraient également utiles,

* et pour me motiver afin que je poursuive ces recherches qui sont très chronophages ;)

Let's start with Wonder by R.J. Paclacio!

📌 Excerpt n°1

Part 1

August

Why I didn't go to school

P. 4

Grammar: present, present perfect, prétérit 

Topics: difference, health issues, homeschooling, school.

Next week I start fifth grade. Since I've never been to a real school before, I am pretty much totally and completely petrified. People think I haven't gone to school because of the way I look, but it's not that. It's because of all the surgeries I've had. Twenty-seven since I was born. The bigger ones happened before I was even four years old, so I don't remember those. But I've had two to three surgeries every year since then (some big, some small), and because I'm little for my age, and I have some other medical mysteries that doctors never really figured out, I used to get sick a lot. That's why my parents decided it was better if I didn't go to school. I'm much stronger now, though. The last surgery I had was eight months ago, and I probably won't have any more for another couple of years.

Mom homeschools me. She used to be a children's book illustrator.

 

📌 Excerpt n°2

Part 1

August

Jack, Will, Julian, and Charlotte

P. 21

Grammar: would, will, could, present, preterit

Topics: discovering school.

(Mr. Tushman, headmaster) "August, I thought it would be a good idea for you to meet some students who'll be in your homeroom this year. I figure they could take you around the school a bit, show you the lay of the land, so to speak."

"I don't want to meet anyone,"I said to Mom.

Mr. Tushman was suddenly in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. He leaned down and said very softly in my ear: "It'll be okay, August. These are nice kids, I promise."

"You're going to be okay, Auggie," Mom whispered with all her might.

Before she could say anything else, Mr. Tushman opened the door to his office.

"Come on in, kids," he said, and in walked two boys and a girl. None of them looked over at me or Mom: they stood by the door looking straight at Mr. Tushman like their lives depended on it.

 

📌 Excerpt n°3

Part 1

August

Jack, Will, Julian, and Charlotte

P. 22

Grammar: prétérit, be going to, impératif, présent.

Topics: school.

"What I thought you guys could do is take August on a little tour of the school. Maybe you could start on the third floor? That's where your homeroom class is going to be: room 301. I think. MTS. G, is---"

"Room 301!" Mrs. Garcia called our from the other room.

"Room 301." Mr. Tushman nodded. "And then you can show August the science lab and the computer room. Then work your way down to the library and the performance space on the second floor. Take him to the cafeteria, of course."

"Should we take him to the music room?" asked Julian.

"Good idea, yes," said Mr. Tushman.

 

📌 Excerpt n°4

Part 1

August

The Grand Tour

P. 25

Grammar: present, prétérit, questions.

Topics: homeroom, school.

"I have a question…," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Um. What exactly is homeroom? Is that like a subject?"

"No, that's just your group," explained Charlotte, ignoring Julian's smirk. "It's like where you go when you get to school in the morning and your homeroom teacher takes attendance and stuff like that. In a way, it's your main class even though it's not really a class. I mean, it's a class, but ---"

"I think he gets it, Charlotte," said Jack Will.

 

📌 Excerpt n°5

Part 1

August

The Performance Space

P. 27

Grammar: prétérit, be going to, present perfect.

Topics: difference, homeschooling, electives.

“I’m taking the science elective,” I said.
“Cool!” said Charlotte.
Julian looked directly at me. “The science elective is supposably* the hardest elective of all,” he said. “No offense, but if you’ve never, ever been in a school before, why do you think you’re suddenly going to be smart enough to take the science elective? I mean, have you even studied science before? Like real science, not like the kind you do in kits?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“He was homeschooled, Julian:” said Charlotte.

“So teachers came to his house?” asked Julian, looking puzzled.

“No, his mother taught him!” answered Charlotte.

“Is she a teacher?” Julian said.

“Is your mother a teacher?” Charlotte asked me.

“No,” I said.

“So she’s not a real teacher!” said Julian, as if that proved his point.

* mistake. supposedly: August will correct it later in the novel.

 

📌 Excerpt n°6

Part 1

August

First-Day Jitters

P. 35

Grammar: would, present, prétérit,

Topics: first day of school

Okay, so I admit that the first day of school I was so nervous that the butterflies in my stomach were more like pigeons flying around my insides. Mom and Dad were probably a little nervous, too, but they acted all excited for me, taking pictures of me and Via before we left the house since it was Via’s first day of school, too.

Up until a few days before, we still weren’t sure I would be going to school at all. After my tour of the school, Mom and Dad had reversed sides on whether I should go or not. Mom was now the one saying I shouldn't go and Dad was saying I should. Dad had told me he was really proud of how I’d handled myself with Julian and that I was turning into a quite the strong man. And I heard him tell Mom that he now thought she had been right all along. But Mom, I could tell, wasn’t so sure anymore.

 

📌 Excerpt n°7

Part 1

August

Locks

P. 38

Grammar: composition, be going to, cannot, there is/are, preterit, present.

Topics: first class (homeroom).

she = teacher (Ms. Petosa)

“I’m going to take attendance and do the seating chart,” she continued, sitting on the edge of her desk. Next to her were three neat rows of accordion folders. “When I call your name, come up and I’ll hand you a folder with your name on it. It contains your class schedule and your combination lock, which you should not try to open until I tell you to. Your locker number is written on your class schedule. Be forewarned that some lockers are not right outside this class but down the hall, and before anyone thinks of asking; no, you cannot switch lockers and you can’t switch locks. Then if there’s time at the end of this period, we’re all going to get to know each other a little better, okay? Okay.”

She picked up the clipboard on her desk and started reading the names out loud.

 

📌 Excerpt n°8

Part 1

August

Choose Kind

P. 45

Grammar: verbes à particules, prétérit en -ing, prétérit, could.

Topics: first class. school.

There was a lot of shuffling around when the bell rang and everybody got up to leave. I checked my schedule and it said my next class was English, room 321. I didn’t stop to see if anyone else from my homeroom was going my way: I just zoomed out of the class and down the hall and sat down as far from the front as possible. The teacher, a really tall man with a yellow beard, was writing on the chalkboard.

Kids came in laughing and talking in little groups but I didn’t look up. Basically, the same thing that happened in homeroom happened again: no one sat next to me except for Jack, who was joking around with some kids who weren’t in our homeroom. I could tell Jack was the kind of kid the other kids like. He had a lot of friends. He made people laugh.

When the second bell rang, everyone got quiet and the teacher turned around and faced us.

 

📌 Excerpt n°9

Part 1

August

Choose Kind

P. 48

Grammar: prétérit, be going to, prétérit -ing, verbes à particules, composition, présent.

Topics: precepts, school, growing, essays, life-long learning.

NB: nice idea for our Dream Big textbook! I may be using this concept in my classes (2nde) next year! I’ve got to think about it!

he = Mr. Browne (English teacher)

WHEN GIVEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN BEING RIGHT OR BEING KIND. CHOOSE KIND.

“Okay, so everybody,” he said, facing us again, “I want you to start a brand-new section in your notebooks and call it Mr. Browne’s Precepts.”

He kept talking as we did what he was telling us to do.

“Put today’s date at the top of the first page. And from now on, at the beginning of every month, I’m going to write a new Mr. Browne precept on the chalkboard and you’re going to write it down in your notebook. Then we’re going to discuss that precept and what it means. And at the end of the month, you’re going to write an essay about it, about what it means to you. So by the end of the year, you’ll have your own list of precepts to take away with you.

“Over the summer, I ask all my students to come up with their very own personal precept, write it on a postcard, and mail it to me from wherever you go on your summer vacation.”

“People really do that?” said a girl whose name I didn’t know.
“Oh yeah!” he answered, “people really do that. I’ve had students send me new precepts years after they had graduated from this school, actually. It’s pretty amazing.”

 

📌 Excerpt n°10

Part 2

Via (August’s bigger sister)

High school

P. 91

Grammar: could, prétérit, composition, génitif, effet de style de la répétition.

Topics: school functions.

What I always loved most about middle school was that it was separate and different from home. I could get there and be Olivia Pullman -- not Via, which is my name at home. Via was what they called me at elementary school, too. Back then, everyone knew all about us, of course. Mom used to pick me up after school, and August was always in the stroller. There weren’t a lot of people who were equipped to babysit for Auggie, so Mom and Dad brought him to all my class plays and concerts and recitals, all the school functions, the bake sales and the book fairs. My friends knew him. My friends’ parents knew him. My teachers knew him. The janitor knew him.

 

📌 Excerpt n°11

Part 2

Via

Time to Think

P. 115

Grammar: present, avoid + ing, impératif, prétérit,

Topics: school, bad days at school, wanting to stop going to school.

“You have to go back to school. Everyone hates school sometimes. I hate school sometimes. I hate my friends sometimes. That’s just life, Auggie. You want to be treated normally, right? This is normal! We all have to go to school sometimes despite the fact that we have bad days, okay?”

“Do people go out of their way to avoid touching you, Via?” he answered, which left me temporarily without an answer. “Yeah, right. That’s what I thought. So don’t compare your bad days at school to mine, okay?”

“Okay, that’s fair,” I said. “but it’s not a contest about whose days suck the most, Auggie. The point is we all have to put up with the bad days. Now, unless you want to be treated like a baby the rest of your life, or like a kid with special needs, you just have to suck it up and go.”

He didn’t say anything, but I think that last bit was getting to him.

 

📌 Excerpt n°12

Part 3

Summer (August’s friend)

Weird Kids

P. 119

Grammar: superlatif, prétérit, questions, composition, affixation, prétérit -ing,

Topics: school hardships when you’re different. inclusion. exclusion.

Who knew that my sitting with August Pullman at lunch would be such a big deal? People acted like it was the strangest thing in the world. It’s weird how weird kids can be.

I sat with him that first day because I felt sorry for him. That’s all. Here he was, this strange-looking lid in a brand-new school. No one was talking to him. Everyone was staring at him.  All the girls at my table were whispering about him. He wasn’t the only new kid at Beecher Prep, but he was the one everyone was talking about. Julian had nicknamed him the Zombie Kid, and that’s what everyone was calling him.

 

📌 Excerpt n°13

Part 8

August

The Fifth Grade Nature Retreat

P. 250

Grammar: plu perfect, present perfect -ing, present, composition, present perfect.

Topics: ENVIRONMENT (Green USA, reserve) / School.

Every year in the spring, the fifth graders of Beecher Prep go away for three days and two nights to a place called the Broarwood Nature Reserve in Pennsylvania. It’s a four-hour bus drive away. The kids sleep in cabins with bunk beds. There are campfires and s’mores and long walks through the woods. The teachers have been prepping us about this all year long, so all the kids in the grade are excited about it -- except for me. And it’s not even that I’m not excited, because I kind of am -- it’s just I’ve never slept away from home before and I’m kind of nervous.

Most kids have had sleepovers by the time they’re my age. A lot of kids have gone to sleepaway camps, or stayed with their grandparents or whatever. Not me. Not unless you include hospital stays, but even then Mom or Dad always stayed with me overnight.

 

📌 Excerpt n°14

Part 8

August

Be Kind to Nature

P. 261

Grammar:

Topics: ENVIRONMENT (Green USA, reserve) / School.

The Broarwood Nature Reserve, as you know, is dedicated to preserving our natural resources and the environment. We ask that you leave no litter behind. Clean up after yourselves. Be kind to nature and it will be kind to you. We ask that you keep that in mind as you walk around the grounds. Do not venture beyond the orange cones at the edges of the fairgrounds. Do not go into the cornfields or the woods. Please keep the free roaming to a minimum. Even if you don’t feel like watching the movie, your fellow students may feel otherwise, so please be courteous: no talking, no playing music, no running around. The restrooms are located on the other side of the concession stands. After the movie is over, it will be quite dark, so we ask that all of you stay with your schools as you make your way back to your buses. 

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