Allusions and Key Terms in Inside Out and Back Again

Starting a unit or lesson with the key vocabulary aids in overall comprehension and retention. In this activity, students will create a storyboard that defines and illustrates key vocabulary found in the book Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. Students will create a Spider map of 3-5 terms at the teachers discretion. Each cell will contain a term or allusion, its definition or description, and an appropriate illustration.

Examples of Vocabulary from Inside Out and Back Again

áo dài: Vietnamese national garment of a tight-fitting silk tunic worn over trousers; meaning literally "long shirt".

Bruce Lee: U.S. actor and kung fu expert, Bruce Lee starred in a number of martial arts movies.

Communism: a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

cyclo: three-wheel bicycle taxi that appeared in Vietnam during the French colonial period.

dông: coin, the basic monetary unit of Vietnam.

durian: an oval spiny tropical fruit containing a creamy pulp and a pungent aroma.

I Ching: Translated as The Book of Changes, the I Ching is an ancient Chinese manual of divination based on eight symbolic trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams, interpreted in terms of the principles of yin and yang. It was included as one of the “five classics” of Confucianism.

Glutinous: like glue in texture; sticky.

Gong: metal disk with a turned rim, giving a resonant note when struck.

immigration: the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country.

loyalty: a strong feeling of support or allegiance.

papaya a tropical fruit shaped like an elongated melon, with edible orange flesh and small black seeds.

refugee: a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

Navy: the branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations at sea.

semi-autobiographical: a written work dealing partly with the writer's own life but also containing fictional elements.

tamarind: sticky brown acidic pulp from the pod of a tree of the pea family, widely used as a flavoring in Asian cooking.

Vietcong (also Viet Cong): a member of the communist guerrilla movement in Vietnam that fought the South Vietnamese government forces 1954–75 with the support of the North Vietnamese army and opposed the South Vietnamese and US forces in the Vietnam War; from Vietnamese, meaning literally "Vietnamese Communist".

Vietnam (Viet Nam): a southeast Asian country on the South China Sea. Vietnam is the country east of Laos and Cambodia and it is south of China.

The Vietnam War: Also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War. It was a conflict between communist North Vietnam and noncommunist South Vietnam. The war was fought in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.