Unifying Concept: Building Communities
Overview: In the unit, students explore how characters build and shape their communities. Students will read/listen to a variety of stories about individuals and groups contributing to or challenging beliefs/practices within their community. Through this study, they will develop an understanding of how community is crafted and how beliefs and practices can be created or challenged.
Purpose:
To examine the importance of helping their community
To explore how cooperation improves a community
To explore how people can make a difference in their communities
To understand how a person or group can shape or change a community’s commonly held beliefs and practices
Enduring Understandings:
We create and shape our communities through our own unique and shared experiences. / Essential Questions:
1.Why is it important to help your community?
2. How does cooperation help us improve our community?
3. How does on person make a difference in their community?
4. Do you think a person or group should challenge a community’s beliefs or
practices? Why or why not?
5. Why might it be important to challenge an established belief or practice?
Target Standards are emphasized during the quarter and used in a formal assessment to evaluate student mastery.
Highly-Leveraged1 arethe most essential for students to learn because they have endurance (knowledge and skills are relevant throughout a student's lifetime); leverage (knowledge and skills are used across multiple content areas); and essentiality (knowledge and skills are necessary for success in future courses or grade levels).
2.RL.2 Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
2.RL.9 Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella) by different authors or from different cultures.
2.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.
Supportingare related standards that support the highly-leveraged standards in and across grade levels.
2.RL.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
2.RL.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
2.RL.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
Constant Standards are addressed routinely every quarter.
2.W.4, 4a
2.SL.1,b,c,5,6
Selected Readings of Complex Texts
Extended/Short Texts:
Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair Patricia Polacco
Cactus Soup Eric A. Kimmel / Multicultural Adoptions:
A Chair for My MotherVera B. Williams
Boxes for Katje Candace Fleming
Freedom Summer Deborah Wiles
Stone Soup Jon J. Muth
Additional Instructional Resources
Electronic Resources and Alternative Media:
A Chair For My Mother video
Stone Soup video
Performance Assessments
Formative Assessments:
Questions/Activities for A Chair For My Mother
Questions/Activities for Boxes for Katje
Questions/Activities for Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair
Questions/Activities for Cactus Soup, Stone Soup, and Nail Soup
Questions/Activities for Freedom Summer
Literature response journal
Writing process for final essay / Summative Assessments:
Final Essay: Informative/Explanatory essay about how characters make a difference/improve a community.
Letter on Boxes for Katje
Opinion piece on Freedom Summer
Comparing Cactus Soup and Stone Soup partner presentation
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1This definition for highly-leveraged standards was adapted from the “power standard” definition on the website of Millis Public Schools, K-12, in Massachusetts, USA.
ELA, Office of Curriculum Development©Page 1 of 2