Refugee: Author's Craft, Themes & Evidence — Family & Sacrifice

Refugee: Author's Craft, Themes & Evidence — Family & Sacrifice
Sacrifice Connections Board | Grades 6–8

How much would you sacrifice to protect the people you love?
In this engaging, no-prep lesson, students investigate the sacrifices made by Josef, Isabel, Mahmoud, and their families in Refugee by Alan Gratz. Through collaborative research, close reading, and textual analysis, students examine what characters give up, why they make difficult decisions, and how their sacrifices affect those around them.

Students apply their findings by creating a Sacrifice Connections Board, using textual evidence to compare sacrifices across three storylines and explore how Gratz develops larger themes of family, love, responsibility, and survival.

What's Included
- Teacher Directions with lesson flow, differentiation, and assessment ideas
- Student Overview
- Mini Research Questions
- Five-Step Group Research Activity
- Three Student Worksheets for evidence collection, character motivation analysis, and evidence-based conclusions
- Color and Black-and-White Versions of Student Worksheets

Students Will
- Identify significant sacrifices across all three storylines
- Investigate what characters give up and the personal cost of their decisions
- Collect and analyze specific textual evidence
- Examine how love, responsibility, and survival influence character motivations
- Analyze how one family member's sacrifice affects others
- Compare similarities and differences between sacrifices across historical settings
- Identify meaningful connections between the three narratives
- Develop and defend a claim about the novel's larger message
- Explore how Gratz uses sacrifice to develop themes of family and survival
- Create and present a collaborative Sacrifice Connections Board

Why Teachers Love It
- No Prep Required: Ready-to-use directions and structured student activities
- Flexible Timing: Designed for 1–2 class periods of 45–60 minutes each
- Meaningful Literary Analysis: Moves students beyond plot summary to examine character motivations, consequences, and theme
- Collaborative Learning: Encourages discussion, research, and evidence-based reasoning
- Critical Thinking: Challenges students to evaluate difficult decisions and their effects on family relationships
- Textual Evidence Focus: Strengthens students' ability to support interpretations with specific details from the novel
- Creative Application: Students organize and communicate their findings through a thematic connections board
- Built-In Differentiation: Supports a range of reading levels and learning needs
- Print-Friendly: Includes color and black-and-white student worksheets

Perfect For
- Refugee by Alan Gratz novel studies
- Middle school Language Arts and Literature
- Author's craft and theme analysis
- Character motivation and development lessons
- Family, sacrifice, and survival discussions
- Close reading and textual evidence practice
- Compare-and-contrast activities
- Collaborative literary investigations
- Small-group research and presentations

Help students discover how extraordinary sacrifices reveal the strength of family bonds and the difficult choices people face when survival is at stake!
Through this investigation, students develop a deeper understanding of how Gratz connects three refugee journeys through acts of sacrifice. Students learn to recognize how love, responsibility, courage, and difficult decisions shape the experiences of families facing extraordinary circumstances.

This resource is an independent educational supplement and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Alan Gratz or the novel's publisher. A copy of the novel is required.