ACTIVITY

Heroes in Action 1.7

SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Group Discussion, Notetaking,
Quickwrite, Summarizing/Paraphrasing, Brainstorming

Anticipation Guide
Read the following statements. Mark each blank with either an A if you
agree with the statement or a D if you disagree with the statement.
Go with your first instinct or gut reaction and try not to linger on your
decisions. When you complete the questionnaire, you will share your
decisions with a classmate.

1. All heroes are brave.

2. Heroes are created by the events around them.

3. Most people have a hero.

4. You cannot be defeated and still be considered a hero.

5. In order to be a true hero, a person would have to risk his or

her life.

6. If all you want is fame and glory, then regardless of what you
do, you should not be called a hero.

7. All heroes are human.

8. Real-life heroes are not like the heroes we read about in

books or watch in movies.

9. Heroes are always handsome or beautiful.

10. If you perform one heroic deed, then you are a hero.
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.

11. Heroes are always famous.

12. I know a person whom I consider a hero.

13. Heroic deeds happen every day, all around us.

14. Heroes must face tragedy.

15. Heroes never return to normal life.

16. Heroes are always adults.

Unit 1 • The Challenge of Heroism 17

 ACTIVITY 1.7
continued
Heroes in Action

Before Reading
Brainstorm a list of events or challenges or situations in which an
ordinary person might act heroically.

Quickwrite: Write about an event that involved someone acting

heroically. This may be an event from your brainstormed list, an event
that you saw personally, or one that you have heard or read about.
Perhaps it is an event that you saw on the news or depicted in a movie.
Write about the most important aspects of the event. (What was the
event? Whom did it involve? When did it happen? Where did it occur?
Why is it an important event? How did it involve heroism?)

© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.

During Reading
As you read the following article, take notes in the My Notes section
on the 5 Ws and an H questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and
How. Paraphrase the facts of the article, rather than quoting passages
verbatim. Your How? note should answer the question “How can the boy
be considered a hero?”

Remember, paraphrasing a text requires care. When you paraphrase,

you must use different language and sentence structure. If a paraphrase
is a word-for-word match to the original text or so close that it is
difficult to tell the difference, it could be called plagiarism.
18 SpringBoard® English Textual Power™ Level 3
 Article ACTIVITY 1.7
continued

Love Triumphs:
6-Year-Old Becomes My Notes

a Hero to Band of
Toddlers, Rescuers W

Hurricane Katrina - Tense days lead to reunion of kids

and their moms
W
by Ellen Barry

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Baton Rouge, LA – In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this
group of evacuees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road,
holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him
around as if he were their leader. They were holding hands. Three of W
the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers.
A 3-year-old girl had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-
old spoke for all of them, and he said his name was Deamonte Love.
After their rescue Thursday, paramedics in the Baton Rouge rescue
operations headquarters tried to coax their names out of them.
Transporting the children alone was “the hardest thing I’ve ever W
done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead” or that they
had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.

technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove
them out of New Orleans. “It goes back to the same thing,” he said.
“How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?
W
At the rescue headquarters, the children ate cafeteria food and fell
into a deep sleep. Deamonte gave his address, his phone number, and
the name of his elementary school. He said the 5-month-old was his
brother, Darynael, that two others were his cousins, Tyreek and Zoria.
The other three lived in his apartment building. The children were
clean and healthy, said Joyce Miller, a nurse who examined them. It was
clear, she said, that “time had been taken with those kids.” The baby was H
“fat and happy.”
The children were transferred to a shelter operated by the
Department of Social Services, rooms full of toys and cribs where
mentors from the Big Buddy Program were on hand. For the next two
days, the staff did detective work. One of the 2-year-olds steadfastly
refused to say her name until a worker took her picture with a digital
camera and showed it to her. The little girl pointed at it and cried out,
Unit 1 • The Challenge of Heroism 19
 ACTIVITY 1.7
continued
Heroes in Action

&
“Gabby!” One of the boys—with a halo of curly hair—had a G printed
GRAMMAR USAGE on his T-shirt when he arrived; when volunteers started calling him G,
Prepositional phrases they noticed that he responded. Deamonte began to give more details
add detail in sentences by to Derrick Robertson, a 27-year-old Big Buddy mentor: How he saw his
showing relationships of mother cry when he was loaded onto the helicopter. How he promised
time, direction, or location. he’d take care of his brother.
Prepositional phrases
Later Saturday night, they found Deamonte’s mother, who was in
function as adjectives
or adverbs. Note the
a shelter in San Antonio along with the four mothers of the other five
examples in this sentence: children. Catrina Williams, 26, saw her children’s pictures on a Web
site set up over the weekend by the National Center for Missing and
In a phone interview Exploited Children. By Sunday, a private plane from Angel Flight was
(adverbial phrase, waiting to take the children to Texas.
modifying said), Williams
said that she is the kind of In a phone interview, Williams said she is the kind of mother who
mother (adjectival phase, doesn’t let her children out of her sight. What happened on Thursday,
modifying kind) who she said, was that her family, trapped in an apartment building, began
doesn’t let her children to feel desperate. The water wasn’t going down and they had been living
out of her sight (adverbial without light, food or air conditioning for four days. The baby needed
phrase, modifying doesn’t milk and the milk was gone. So she decided they would evacuate by
let). helicopter. When a helicopter arrived to pick them up, they were told
You may use prepositional to send the children first and that the helicopter would be back in 25
phrases in your writing minutes. She and her neighbors had to make a quick decision. It was a
to add details to your wrenching moment, Williams’ father, Adrian Love, told her to send the
sentences. children ahead.
“I told them to go ahead and give them up because me, I would give
my life for my kids. They should feel the same way,” said Love, 48.

© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.

My Notes His daughter and her friends followed his advice. “We did what we
had to do for our kids because we love them,” Williams said.
The helicopter didn’t come back. While the children were transported
to Baton Rouge, their parents wound up in San Antonio, and although
Williams was reassured that they would be reunited, days passed without
any contact. On Sunday, she was elated. “All I know is, I just want to see
my kids,” she said. “Everything else will just fall into place.”

After Reading
On separate paper summarize, in three or four sentences, the main
points of the article (use your 5Ws and H notes).

20 SpringBoard® English Textual Power™ Level 3