Background and Objectives
The children for whom this unit has been constructed are first-grade students in my self-contained classroom at Henry M. Brader Elementary School in the Christina School District. Christina School District is located in New Castle County, Delaware and serves both the urban and suburban populations of Wilmington and the surrounding areas. There are approximately 17,000 pre-kindergarten through high school students in Christina's thirty-one schools. Brader is one of twenty-two elementary schools and serves its surrounding community in the city of Newark. Brader has approximately 700 preschool through fifth-grade students. Forty-two percent of Brader's student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. I am part of a team of five talented first-grade teachers in my school who work closely together, sharing ideas and strategies generously.
This unit is designed to be implemented in the spring of first grade to allow the children first to develop the phonics and word attack skills necessary to decode and comprehend text at various, and sometimes challenging, reading levels. However, accommodations will be discussed to make the text accessible for all students. In this three-week unit each student will choose one historical figure from a preselected group of four individuals and read a biography based on that individual's life. The children will view other selected materials related to that biographical figure to expand their exposure to that individual. The children will create character analyses that they will demonstrate through role taking performances as the biographical figures in a "living wax museum" performance. Additionally, while the children are reading their biographies of choice they will be participating in activities to foster their development of empathy to better understand each biographical figure and each other.
In Delaware units of instruction are designed around an enduring understanding for the children to reach through their learning experiences. Through participation in this unit the enduring understanding that students should reach is that biographies can provide insights in which the inner and outer lives of human beings are revealed. Their lives are revealed through their struggles, dilemmas, and the events of that time period. In order to gain this understanding the children will explore these essential questions: how do texts about human beings of other ages, genders, races, religions, and disabilities affect me? How do they shape my decisions? How do these texts tell experiences similar to my own?
This unit also addresses Common Core and Delaware State Standards in English Language Arts through its design and activities. The students will read biographies, use reading strategies to comprehend these texts, synthesize and organize information from various media sources, write a character analysis, and share their character analyses through oral presentations.
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