The overall content objectives of my unit are as follows. This unit will be taught over the course of 10 classes that meet once a week. The unit will begin with a pre-test and a discussion on what citizenship means as a definition and as a concept to the students. The aim is to discover whether the students identify citizenship as a part of their identity or simply as a concept. If only the latter, the idea is to understand why they do not see being American as a part of their identity or themselves. We will then move to the two specific rights that this unit will cover. The aim is to introduce them as rights that they earn simply by being citizens, as a birthright. We will start be explaining what those rights are and discussing if the students feel like they have or will have access to them. The unit will then lead into the brief history of the struggle for minority groups to obtain these rights, for example the women’s suffrage movement and the fight for desegregation in the south. It is important to review for these aspects of history are reviewed during this unit because my students will be able to identify with the groups that were fighting for these rights, for example, any girls in the group can identify with the women’s suffrage movement, and any African American students can identify with desegregation. It is important for the students to understand that these rights, which are now fully available to them would not have been available to them, at different points in history. After covering the history we will move to dissect the specific aspects of the two rights. This means that we will take each right individually and use a KWL chart to identify, what do we know, what do we want to know, and what have we learned, and put all of the information together.
These topics will help the students dissect both of the rights further and provide an opportunity for critical thinking and fuller understanding,