Exploring Standards-based Lesson Plans

For this week's Educational Technology assignment I will explore an example of standards-based lesson plan as it applies to my grade range and subject area. In honor of Black History Month, I also want to tie my sample lesson into some young adult (YA) books I've recently read and would like to someday incorporate into my own curriculum. My English/Language Arts licensure will cover grades 7-12 and these books are appropriate for this age range.

To begin, I was inspired by the week-long Black Lives Matter at School site which is a "national committee of educators organizing for racial justice in education" (BLM at School, home page). Of course this learning opportunity will work for any time in the school year, but the committee focuses on a Black Lives Matter curriculum week in early February.

I pulled a sample standards-based lesson plan that I imagined tying in to the novels I loved. The novels from my own bookshelf include...

     1. Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper
     2. Dear Martin, by Nic Stone
     3. Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson
     4. Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
     5. Copper Sun, by Sharon Draper
     6. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
     7. American Street, by Ibi Zoboi

There are so many more! Including, of course, anything by one of the most important American writers, Toni Morrison. I could fangirl on Toni Morrison all day! However, for this post, I chose novels that: a) involve a teenage protagonist, b) deal directly with the U.S. legal system (including Jim Crow laws, etc.), c) are award-winners, bestsellers, or teacher favorites, and d) tie into my sample lesson plan.

The sample lesson plan I'm using is a Google Doc on the site and can be found here. As you can see, it fits the AYA grade range and is an interdisciplinary introduction to "Restorative Justice, Empathy, and Loving Engagement." It aligns with a number of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) including: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.7, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.4.

Additional lesson plans and resources are available by clicking the link for Lesson Plans on the home page menu and scrolling down to "Black Lives Matter in #PHLed: Lesson Resources Overview." This Google link takes you to an exceptional list of videos, activities, and learning opportunities all connected to CCSS. The lessons are organized by grade range and apply to all subject areas. It is worth checking out!

How do the standards play out in the design of this lesson plan? Since this blog post focuses on analyzing the standards I will break down each standard with an example from the lesson.

ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1 This standard asks students to support inferences with textual evidence. It's the classic "show don't tell" of teaching literature -- show me how you drew this conclusion from reading the text by pointing to influential passages. Students practice this skill by reading an excerpt of "Destruction of Black Civilization" by Chancellor Williams and responding with discussion-based questions that draw on Williams' argument. Here's a screenshot from that portion of the lesson which I'm including because I'm taking the lesson out of order for this standards analysis post...

ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2 I liken this standard to following a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods in that students will identify key textual details as part of a pathway to the bigger ideas. What are the themes of this text and how did you find the "breadcrumbs" to follow? This is illustrated by watching the video "Crash Course in Philosophy: What is Justice?" Students then discern the theme of justice by identifying the various types of justice presented here.

ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7 moves students up Bloom's Taxonomy by evaluating the texts they've read in a diverse array of formats to tease out the deeper meaning. Students achieve this by connecting the perspectives they read and viewed about justice with what they know about the U.S. justice system. Here's a screenshot of some discussion questions following the video...

ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.1 and ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.2 takes students from what others say about justice to what they say in their own words. After the students demonstrate understanding of the various perspectives, they work in small groups to evaluate which ideas best fit the definition of restorative justice.

Finally, the culminating activity involves students creating original ideas about justice. This aligns with ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.4 in which students present their ideas in a new format, namely the "Restorative Manifesto" list of "practices, beliefs and values that are restorative in nature" ("Restorative Justice" lesson plan). I love this part of the lesson plan so I'll include it here...

There are a number of extension activities I won't go into here but look like an exciting way to bring these ideas to life.

Finally, how might I incorporate this into an ELA classroom using one of the novels from the above list? Let me count the ways...

1.  Consider these perspectives of justice as they relate to the international tragedy of enslavement in Copper Sun. How did the African conception of slavery differ from the European practice? What are similarities and differences between indentured servitude and slavery? How are our current ideas about freedom and justice similar to and different from the 18th century? What forms of injustice do we deal with today? Are these practices of injustice part of one individual's personality or built into our system of laws and culture?

2. How do the novels Dear Martin and The Hate U Give directly confront the contemporary U.S. justice system? How could the core tragedies have been avoided? How do the personal lives of the protagonists elaborate our ideas about justice? Is the U.S. justice system a just system according to these novels? How do the character's experiences with this system relate to your own understanding of restorative justice?

3. The protagonists in Sing, Unburied, Sing and American Street are haunted by ghosts of those who unjustly died. How do we continue to be haunted by the specters of history? What unrest do these ghosts bring into the present situations? How are ghosts and supernatural monsters a metaphor for injustices that won't go quietly into the night?

4. Another Sharon Draper novel, Out of My Mind, deals with another form of injustice -- the incapacity to speak and move. When Melody's ability to communicate changes, how does her sense of freedom and justice change? Where do injustices lurk that we might not notice? How does our medical system and society ignore or silence bodies and communication patterns that are marginalized? How can mainstream voices/bodies/ideas be better at empathy and listening?

5. Finally, in the poetry of Brown Girl Dreaming, we see the power of place as it affects the culture of justice and freedom. What are the different attitudes of racial justice, fairness, and equality in the different places where Woodson lives? How is time rooted in place, with "traditions" of Jim Crow or other forms of racism ground into the soil? How do different religious practices share opportunities for spiritual and earthly freedoms? Are these practices constricting in other ways? How does poetry connect to other Black forms of expression, such as spirituals, rap and hip-hop, and spoken word performance? Is the poetic form constrictive or liberating for the ideas?

I hope you've enjoyed this excursion in thinking through standards-based lesson plans and the tie-in to Black Lives Matter at School and contemporary YA literature and will find some takeaways for your own lessons. I want to give special thanks to the Black Lives Matter at School committee for designing this deeply engaging material and making it available publically for educators and community partners. Thank you for your work!