We are continuing in Module 3-Civil Rights Heroes this week. There are 34 lessons to this module.  It is estimated that it will take us all of the 3rd quarter to get through all 34 lessons. Below are the texts and paintings we will be studying throughout the module.   

Also listed are the Common Core Standards we will cover and the big FOCUS questions we will answer throughout. 

Module Summary

Our Ruby taught us all a lot.
She became someone who helped change our country.
She was part of history,
just like the generals and presidents are part of history.
They’re leaders, and so was Ruby.
She led us away from hate, and she led us nearer to 
knowing each other,
the white folks and the black folks.

–Ruby’s Mother, Epigraph, The Story of Ruby Bridges

Module 3 compels students to closely examine the impact of three key Civil Rights heroes: Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, and Sylvia Mendez. How did these figures respond to the injustices they faced? What can we learn from their actions? A series of narrative nonfiction texts and historical photographs serve as students’ insight to the past. By examining the impact of these three individuals on the country, students build deep knowledge of what it means to live out the nation’s creed of “liberty and justice for all.”

The Module begins by introducing students to Ruby Bridges, the first black student to attend a white elementary school in Louisiana. Both the accessibility of the text, and the fact that Ruby herself is a Grade 1 student, help invite students into this moment in history.

Students then zoom out to study two texts about King. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington sets the historical stage for a close reading of excerpts from the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, with stunning paintings by Kadir Nelson. Students examine the power words have to inspire change. They examine the power of the individual to unite others in the fight against injustice.

Armed with this historical background knowledge, students return to the story of Ruby Bridges with a deeper sense of the significance of her actions. Students experience the same historical moment in two texts. They examine the moment when Ruby Bridges walks into the white elementary school for the first time. Students examine point of view in these texts, and experiment with narrative writing that details thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Students then turn their attention to Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, the story of Sylvia Mendez and her family’s fight to end school segregation in California in the 1940s. This text offers insight into the power of laws in effecting systemic change. Students develop a more nuanced understanding of point of view, look closely at the illustrations, and develop their narrative writing skills to include a sense of closure.

The End-of-Module (EOM) Task invites students to step into the shoes of one of the two children they learned about in the module: Ruby Bridges or Sylvia Mendez. Students write an original narrative describing a moment from one of the module texts. Students look through the eyes of another to describe their thoughts, feelings, and actions in the face of injustice.

The module culminates in a Socratic Seminar in which students have the chance to make connections among the three Civil Rights heroes they have studied. Students explore the importance of responding to injustice, and come to recognize the impact an individual can have in helping to make the world a better place for us all. 

Texts

CORE TEXTS

• Picture Book (Informational)
• I Have A Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; paintings, Kadir Nelson
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington, Frances E. Ruffin; illustrations, Stephen Marchesi
• Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, Ruby Bridges
• The Story of Ruby Bridges, Robert Coles; illustrations, George Ford
• Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, Duncan Tonatiuh

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS

• Photography
• Selma to Montgomery March, Alabama, 1965, James Karales
• Poetry
• “Words like Freedom,” Langston Hughes
• “Dreams,” Langston Hughes
• Video
• “Civil Rights - Ruby Bridges”
• “The Man Who Changed America”
• “Ruby Bridges Interview”
• “Sylvia Mendez and Sandra Mendez Duran”
• Music
• “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” Stephen Griffith
• “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” The Freedom Singers
• “This Little Light of Mine,” Stephen Griffith
• “America (My Country Tis of Thee),” Stephen Griffith
• Article
• “Different Voices,” Anna Gratz Cockerille
• “When Peace Met Power,” Laura Helweg

 FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 1–6

• What injustices did people face before the Civil Rights Act of 1964? 

FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 7–13

• What was Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for the world? 

FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 14–18

• How did Ruby Bridges respond to injustice? 

FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 19–23

• How did Ruby Bridges respond to injustice? 

FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 24–29

• How did the Mendez family respond to injustice? 

FOCUSING QUESTION: LESSONS 30–34

• How can people respond to injustice? 

Module Learning Goals

Knowledge Goals

• Recognize how people responded to injustices in the United States.
• Understand the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the changes that resulted.
• Identify leaders who fought against segregation.
• Recognize that speeches are an important type of literary text.

Reading Goals

• Build knowledge of literary devices including rhymes and repeated words and phrases and how they add meaning to texts. (RL 2.4)
• Identify who is telling the story. (RL 2.6)
• Recognize how different characters have different points of view and how that impacts the way a story is told. (RL 2.6)
• Determine how images add information to text to improve comprehension. (2.7)
• Identify the most important points in a text. (2.9)
• Compare and contrast the important points told by different texts on a topic. (2.9)

Writing Goals

• Write informative paragraphs using information from module texts that include an introduction, topic statement, evidence, and conclusion. (2.2)
• Organize and choose text evidence to respond to a prompt. (2.2, W.2.3, W.2.8)
• Write narrative paragraphs describing a moment in time with details. (2.3)
• Write narrative paragraphs describing a response to a problem that include thoughts, feeling, and actions. (2.3)

Speaking & Listening Goals

• Speak with peers on one topic. (2.3)
• Gather information about a topic, and ask/answer questions to prepare to speak about that topic. (2.3)
• Listen for the topic of a conversation and ask for more information about that topic. (2.1.c)

Language Goals

• Distinguish between adjectives and adverbs and use them correctly in writing. (2.1.e)
• Expand and rearrange a variety of sentences. (1.f)
• Use word knowledge to predict the meaning of compound words. (2.4.d)
• Distinguish shades of meaning among closely related verbs and adjectives. (2.5.b) 

Module in Context

Knowledge: The Civil Rights Movement is an era of American history led by many heroes. In this module, students closely read informational texts to build their knowledge of how leaders of the Civil Rights Movement—Ruby Bridges, King, and Sylvia Mendez—brought permanent change to the United States. Students develop an understanding of how different responses to injustice—including speaking, protesting, and contesting injustice in court—resulted in changes to segregation. By engaging with a series of rich, complex texts, including several poems, songs, and a famous speech, students explore the challenges and responses of leaders in American history.

Reading: Students closely read a variety of informational texts and study historical images to build their knowledge of Civil Rights leaders. Engaging with protest songs and poems of the Civil Rights Movement, students see how repetition and rhyme can emphasize words’ powerful meanings. Students examine images to build understanding of informational text, identifying the most important points in images and texts and recognizing how different authors present different points. Students also learn to determine how a narrator’s point of view adds different information to a text. Students read different accounts of the same event, exploring how authors can provide different information and points of view.

Writing: In the beginning of Module 3, students build on the informative writing skills they practiced in Modules 1 and 2. Students discuss the importance of research sources when writing about historical moments, and practice drawing evidence from different texts when writing an informative paragraph. After this practice, students then turn their attention to narrative writing. Students use SCAPE charts to identify story elements as pre-writing for their own narrative paragraphs. They examine the importance of thoughts, feelings, and actions as details in their narrative paragraphs. In the EOM Task, students write a narrative from the perspective of Ruby Bridges or Sylvia Mendez, looking through their eyes to describe their thoughts, feelings, and actions in the face of injustice.

Speaking and Listening: Students develop their speaking and listening skills further in this module by thinking about how to listen for a main topic and then how to speak on topic to deepen their understanding. Students practice listening and determining the main topic when listening to a text or in a conversation. They then practice asking questions to gather information and deepen their focus of a topic. During two Socratic Seminars, students integrate these new skills with those they learned in Modules 1 and 2. In the first Socratic Seminar, students discuss the power of King’s words. In the final lesson of the module, students discuss how responding to injustices can impact the world. 

Standards

FOCUS STANDARDS

Reading Literature
RL.2.4	Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
RL.2.6	Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.
Reading Informational Text
RI.2.7	Explain how specific images contribute to and clarify a text.
RI.2.9	Compare and contrast the most important points presented by two texts on the same topic.
Writing
W.2.3	Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.
W.2.8	Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
Speaking and Listening
SL.2.1.c	Ask for clarification and further explanation as needed about the topics and texts under discussion.
SL.2.3	Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says in order to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.
Language
L.2.1.e	Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.
L.2.1.f	Produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sentences.
L.2.4.d	Use knowledge of the meaning of individual words to predict the meaning of compound words.
L.2.5.b	Distinguish shades of meaning among closely related verbs and closely related adjectives.

CONTINUING STANDARDS

Reading Literature
RL.2.10	By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Reading Informational Text
RI.2.10	By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Language
L.2.6	Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts, including using adjectives and adverbs to describe.

 

Suggested Student Understandings

• People have fought injustices in the United States.
• The Civil Rights Movement had many heroic leaders.
• Schools, restaurants, movie theaters, and many other public places were segregated before the Civil Rights Movement.
• People fight injustice with words such as speeches, songs, and literature.
• People fight injustice with actions such as protests and petitions to change laws.