Mid-Planning

We are midway through the unit collaboration project and I am feeling better about the progress we are making now then I was at the pre-planning stage. Stacey and I have established we will be creating a unit focusing on historical fiction. We have chosen the book Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor to focus the unit around. Stacey will be creating a lesson around what historical fiction is and what the characteristics of historical fiction are. She also had the idea of a lesson dealing with the timeline of the civil rights movement that starts from the Civil War and goes up to 1968.

One of the lessons I will be focusing on in the media center is with comparing/contrasting Martin Luther King, Jr. and Frederick Douglass. The students will work in groups and specific books will be introduced that discuss each of these prominent figures. Another lesson I was thinking of for the media center is centered around students interviewing their families. It would be a way to show the relationship between history and personal experiences and how each family's experience is different and how it has shaped them. They would all focus on one particular event in history and ask questions such as why was the event important, how did people feel about it, how did it affect you and your life, and what was happening in our family at the time? This would engage students from historically underrepresented groups. They could discover how a major historical event shaped their family and others from their background. Students could choose from a variety of ways to present their finding whether it is by video, PowerPoint presentation, etc. They would then see how their family's experience was different from their classmates.

With having the role of the media specialist, I have been looking for sources that would have enrichment activities for the unit being created. For instance the idea of interviewing a family member came from National Endowment for the Humanities EDSITEment website. There is also a WebQuest that was created for this book by a teacher in Michigan which would be a great tool to incorporate in this unit. Basically, I have been looking for ways to add to the main lessons that would be taught in a unit such as this and what would enhance them and the information being taught.