The second phase of my curriculum unit will be greatly inspired by the first phase as it will challenge my students to take what they have learned about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King's life a step further, into a deeper, more personal realm of thinking. This section will focus primarily of King's message of peaceful protest as a way to address the challenges of this time in history. The lesson sequence will be as follows:
Day 1: Activating Background Knowledge and Previewing Text
Reading Workshop
:
Create a new KWL chart wherein the topic is Peaceful Protest and discuss what the phrase could mean based on what we have learned so far about MLK's life and work. Preview the text,
Peaceful Heroes
by Jonah Winter by way of noticing which famous people are highlighted throughout history.
Writing Workshop
:
Students will reflect on the difference between a hero and a peaceful hero using a Venn diagram to compare the similarities and differences of each distinction.
Plugged Into Reading
:
Begin previewing
Sit-In, How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down
. Utilize the graphic organizers created by Janet Allen's Plugged Into Nonfiction pages 3-4 wherein students will be given a word bank to write sentences predicting what they expect to read in
Sit In.
Day 2: Specialized Vocabulary
Reading Workshop
:
Read aloud the short excerpt about Martin Luther King from
Peaceful Heroes
on pgs 12-15 and discuss the meanings of specialized vocabulary words like: Integrated, bias, peaceful demonstration, racism, bigotry by way of using context clues, prior knowledge and a dictionary or glossary. As the students read their own independent reading texts, which should include
The Story of Ruby Bridges
by Robert Coles and
White Water
by Michael S. Brandy and Eric Stein, they will focus on detecting and defining specialized vocabulary in the same manner.
Writing Workshop
:
Students will reflect on how MLK was inspired by the role-models mentioned in the chapter from
Peaceful Heroes
: Jesus and Gandhi, and will do a quick write about a role-model they look up to in their own life. They will reflect on the power of example. (This will be a meaningful precursor to the study of Gandhi in sections 3-4)
Plugged Into Reading
:
Read
Sit-In
aloud or listen to the audio recording, for the purposes of focusing on the specialized vocabulary of Segregation vs. Integration. Students will utilize the graphic organizer page 5 from the Plugged-Into Reading materials afore mentioned.
Day 3: Reading for Information
Reading Workshop
:
Read aloud
Rosa
by Nikki Giovanni either in person or watch the same DVD mentioned in section one,
March On!
as it includes this story as well. Instruct the children to follow along with the purpose of determining how Rosa Parks made her own peaceful protest against segregation.
Writing Workshop
:
Students will go back into the text and track what happened to Rosa Parks, list the effects of the protest, along with the outcomes of the protest. The students will then write down how the protest stayed peaceful.
Plugged Into Reading:
The students will do their own reading of
Sit-In
(by way of audio-support if necessary), and will complete a graphic organizer which asks them to track the events of the four students, David, Joseph, Franklin, and Ezell as they peacefully protested for their right to eat at the Woolworth's lunch counter (page 6 of the Plugged Into Reading materials).
Day 4: Text Features
Reading Workshop
:
Read aloud chapter one of
Little Rock Girl 1957, How a Photograph Changed the Fight for Integration
. Students will note how the text-feature of the photograph can be such a powerful tool to get a message across. Play the NPR audio recording from http://www.npr.org/2011/10/02/140953088/elizabeth-and-hazel-the-legacy-of-little-rock and have a whole class discussion about what they heard regarding, not only Elizabeth but also Hazel's experience of this event and its effect on the rest of their lives.
Writing Workshop
:
Students will go to the computer lab and use the website http://pbskids.org/wayback/civilrights/features_school.html. To read and respond to 'On the Front Lines with the Little Rock 9" to see how other students changed segregation laws. They will use the graphic organizer on page 9 of the Plugged Into Reading material afore mentioned.
Plugged Into Reading
:
Students will read the time-line in
Sit-In
on pages 35-36 and complete the graphic organizer on page 10 of the Plugged Into Reading materials to list new facts they learned from reading the text. They will then list 5 poignant facts about their own life in current day society and then list 5 ways they feel their school and community could be improved.
Day 5: Questioning
Reading Workshop
:
Read aloud
Freedom On the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins
by Carole Weatherford and have children jot down questions they have for the main character who involved herself in the Sit In movement by making protest posters so that one day she would be able to sit a the Woolworth counter and order a banana split sundae.
Writing Workshop
:
Play an audio recording of MLK giving his I Have a Dream Speech. The students will then write a persuasive essay explaining the need for equality during this time in history. They will also address the effectiveness of peacefully protesting as a means toward this end. Along with this essay, students will design a Peaceful Protest Poster in which they must include the time period of the Civil Right Movement, peaceful and inspirational words, a message to the world at large and a symbol to illustrate their message. For the next few weeks, the students will take these pieces through the writing process to publication and select ones will be performed during the Brotherhood Assembly in March as a way to highlight their efforts and spread their message of peace (See Lesson Plan 2).
Plugged Into Reading
:
The students will take the multiple choice and open-ended assessments created by the Plugged Into Reading program which address the key ideas, text features and reading strategies of
Sit-In
(pages 12- 15).