Literacy
During our literacy unit, we will be focusing on reading biographies in class. Students will be focusing on persevering in the face of challenges through the unit focusing on what they can draw from their books. By the end of the unit, students will be able to understand how people hold on to their values and beliefs in the face of challenges and will be able to understand how people rely on or reach out to their community in the face of challenges.
It remains a human universal that we all face challenges at some point in our lives. How we choose to react during times of trial reflects our beliefs, and ultimately determines our success. In researching our social studies unit Storypath: Early Northwest Coast People, and our biography book club series “Who was….”” we found a common thread that ran through both. In both, people responded to challenge by holding fast to their values and beliefs, and by reaching out to community members for support.
Our theme “persevering in the face of challenges,” aligns with both our Storypath unit, as well as the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which Montlake currently adopts. Upon conferring with our cooperating teachers, we learned that our themed literature unit would align with the TC biography unit. This excited us, as it meant we could choose biographies that reflect our theme. For our mentor text, we intentionally chose four picture books of lesser-known people. We wanted our students to see that all people have the ability to overcome challenges and go on to accomplish remarkable things. We chose the subjects of Emma Lazarus, Sammy Lee, Cesar Chavez, and Wilma Rudolph.
These subjects were also chosen because they all represent diverse backgrounds. Emma Lazarus was a woman who believed immigrants were not treated as they deserved, Wilma Rudolph was a black woman who became the first female Olympian to win three gold medals, Sammy Lee was a Korean man who faced discrimination but went on to become an Olympic diver, and Cesar Chavez was a hispanic farm worker who fought for the rights of workers all over the nation. We wanted our mentor text to be culturally responsive and show diverse perspectives.
Furthermore, the “Who was…?” and “Who is…?” series were presented to us by our cooperating teachers without choice. The only people of color represented in the series are Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, and Harriet Tubman. We see this as an ethical dilemma present in all biography units across the U.S. Though these are all influential, important people to study, we felt they represented a small scope of notable people of color. We wanted to broaden our students horizons by providing alternative biographies.
We feel this unit will move our students toward independence because the structure and tasks are familiar to ones they’ve experienced earlier in the year. For example, students were exposed to the book club structure with a fiction unit on studying characters, and with their work in Junior Great Book discussions. As such, our students will come into our unit with an understanding of their roles and responsibilities as readers. They will already know how to fill in their reading logs, use post-its, and cite evidence.
Students will also experience success and independence with the leveling system we used. We made sure that the book club biographies touched on all the guided reading levels of our students. And to differentiate for learners, we came prepared with back-up books for students who finish their biography unit early.
Similarly, we chose the narrative project to draw on their prior experiences of narrative writing, which allows all students to be successful in explaining their understanding of the theme. We decided that if we’re introducing new concepts through a mini-lesson format, we needed to use a familiar structure for means of expression. The narrative is also supported through two home assignments that directly link family background knowledge into the student’s brainstorming process for writing the narrative.
To create a sense of ownership for the narrative, the whole class will publish a book with each narrative. The book will be presented to the library, as well as shared with our kindergarten reading buddies as a celebration of our students’ work.
We chose to have multiple means of expression for student understanding of the theme. We want all of our students to be successful with this task, so we chose the narrative as a written understanding, the discussions as an oral understanding, and the artistic response as another means of expression.
Our theme “persevering in the face of challenges,” aligns with both our Storypath unit, as well as the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, which Montlake currently adopts. Upon conferring with our cooperating teachers, we learned that our themed literature unit would align with the TC biography unit. This excited us, as it meant we could choose biographies that reflect our theme. For our mentor text, we intentionally chose four picture books of lesser-known people. We wanted our students to see that all people have the ability to overcome challenges and go on to accomplish remarkable things. We chose the subjects of Emma Lazarus, Sammy Lee, Cesar Chavez, and Wilma Rudolph.
These subjects were also chosen because they all represent diverse backgrounds. Emma Lazarus was a woman who believed immigrants were not treated as they deserved, Wilma Rudolph was a black woman who became the first female Olympian to win three gold medals, Sammy Lee was a Korean man who faced discrimination but went on to become an Olympic diver, and Cesar Chavez was a hispanic farm worker who fought for the rights of workers all over the nation. We wanted our mentor text to be culturally responsive and show diverse perspectives.
Furthermore, the “Who was…?” and “Who is…?” series were presented to us by our cooperating teachers without choice. The only people of color represented in the series are Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama, and Harriet Tubman. We see this as an ethical dilemma present in all biography units across the U.S. Though these are all influential, important people to study, we felt they represented a small scope of notable people of color. We wanted to broaden our students horizons by providing alternative biographies.
We feel this unit will move our students toward independence because the structure and tasks are familiar to ones they’ve experienced earlier in the year. For example, students were exposed to the book club structure with a fiction unit on studying characters, and with their work in Junior Great Book discussions. As such, our students will come into our unit with an understanding of their roles and responsibilities as readers. They will already know how to fill in their reading logs, use post-its, and cite evidence.
Students will also experience success and independence with the leveling system we used. We made sure that the book club biographies touched on all the guided reading levels of our students. And to differentiate for learners, we came prepared with back-up books for students who finish their biography unit early.
Similarly, we chose the narrative project to draw on their prior experiences of narrative writing, which allows all students to be successful in explaining their understanding of the theme. We decided that if we’re introducing new concepts through a mini-lesson format, we needed to use a familiar structure for means of expression. The narrative is also supported through two home assignments that directly link family background knowledge into the student’s brainstorming process for writing the narrative.
To create a sense of ownership for the narrative, the whole class will publish a book with each narrative. The book will be presented to the library, as well as shared with our kindergarten reading buddies as a celebration of our students’ work.
We chose to have multiple means of expression for student understanding of the theme. We want all of our students to be successful with this task, so we chose the narrative as a written understanding, the discussions as an oral understanding, and the artistic response as another means of expression.
