Classroom Activities
Interactive Read Aloud
Throughout this unit, students will read and listen to literary and informational text about the Civil Rights Movement. Read-alouds give students exposure to text they may not be able to read on their own and a model of fluent, oral reading. It also gives an opportunity for the teacher to model comprehension strategies. Students will learn to ask and answer questions in order to determine the importance of details in the texts and determine the central idea of the texts. Before reading the text, we will do a picture walk or text feature walk depending on the genre. Students will make predictions about what they think will happen in the text based on the title, pictures and text features. During the read aloud, I will stop at certain points in the text so that students can ask and answer questions to myself and their peers. I will also pose questions to students and model how to use details from the text to support my thinking. After reading, students will engage in grand conversations and writing to express their thinking about the text. Below are some prompts that will guide students in finding the central idea of texts read.
Literary Prompts
When students read fictional texts, they will answer such questions as: What is the problem in the story, how does the problem get worse, how do the characters try to solve the problem, and what is the solution to the problem. When students give too much detail, you can ask them: what was one important thing that happened in the beginning, middle and end? You can also ask students to tell you their thoughts in a shorter way (using less details).
Informational Prompts
For reading informational texts, students will answer questions such as: which words are repeated, what do you notice in the pictures being repeated, what is the book mostly about and what details support your thinking.
Analyzing Primary Sources
Students will analyze pictures from different Civil Rights events through answering a series of questions, discussing their thoughts were peers and using a graphic organizer to record their thinking. This activity supports students’ visual literacy skills and allows them to learn the content in an age appropriate and engaging way. It also develops historical thinking skills as students study the past through the images. Below are the prompts students will use to analyze and interpret pictures.
Image Analysis Prompts
During the first phase of analyzing pictures, students will engage in a “literal observation phase” where they focus on initial reactions to the image and describing what they see. Some questions they will answer are: What do you notice? Who do you notice? What are the people wearing? Where are they? What time of year is pictured? Time of day? Do you recognize the place or any of the signs? What is happening in the picture? And Who took this picture?. Students will discuss these questions with a peer and record their thinking on a graphic organizer.
Interpretation Phase
The next phase for image analysis will be the “interpretation phase” where students look at the images to think about what their initial reactions mean in the context of the content they are learning. Some students will be asked are: What title would you give this photograph? Why do you think the photographer took this picture? Who did they want to view it? What do you think it would be like to live during this moment (if you were the person in the picture)? What message does the picture tell us?
Evaluation Phase
In this final phase of image analysis, students will discuss their opinion of the image. Some questions they will think about are: Do you think people should view this picture? Why? What do you think we should remember about this picture? Do you think anything about the picture should be different?
Extension
Students will watch a video, read a poem or an excerpt from a text that gives more background knowledge about the picture.
US Marshals with Young Ruby Bridges on School Steps, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Marshals_with_Young_Ruby_Bridges_on_School_Steps.jpg
Civil Rights March on Washington, https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654393/
Participants, some carrying American Flags, marching in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003675345/resource/
All About Civil Rights Book
Students will create a book to show what they have learned about the civil rights movement. First, students will brainstorm to decide what they want to write about it. It can be one event from the civil rights movement or an overview of all events we learned about. Students will write this information on a graphic organizer. Then students will decide what will go on each page of their book. The graphic organizer will have five boxes for students to fill which will correspond to the information that will go on each of the five pages of their book. Then students will use the graphic organizer to begin writing to give more information from their graphic organizer. They will also draw a picture to go with their writing. Once all five pages are completed, students will reread their book, making revisions. Using an editing checklist, students will participate in conferencing with myself and their peers to edit their books. Finally, students will publish their finished books by reading it to the class.
Mock Campaign
Students will use consensus building within the classroom to determine an issue they all feel needs to be addressed. Then they will work through the building blocks of distributive politics to determine how they will find a solution to their collective issue. Before they start, we will
examine the civil rights movement through the building blocks of distributive politics to determine the coalitions, moral narrative, proximate goals, entrenching of proximate goals, resources and leadership that was in place during that time. I will scaffold students through this thinking using knowledge learned from the texts we will have read. Then students will brainstorm to answer these questions as it applies to their collective issue. Students will also decide what demonstrations they would like to organize (i.e. protest, march, sit-in,)
Building Blocks Questions Students Will Consider
Who will help us? (coalitions) Who will try to stop us? How can we make sure they don’t? – (blocking coalitions), What are our long term and short-term goals (proximate goals)? What goal will help us keep our first goal (entrenching goal)?, What will make other people be on our side? How can we work with other people who may want something similar to (moral narrative)?, Who will provide money (resources)? And Who will lead us? (leadership).
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