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Hayley CunninghamWOK: Humanities

Curriculum Unit Plan

I. Title and brief description : Give a title and short description. What, briefly, will students be doing in this unit of study? (2-3 sentences)

Students will engage in a thematic study of home through a text-set. With a set of diverse

texts, students will expand their schema of home to include not only home being a physical

structure, but home as being a place that has images of family attached to it, images of

community, and images of ancestral roots/culture.

II. Big Idea/Essential Question : Explain your “big idea” and/or essential question.

What is a home? / What signifies a home?

The overarching goal of my unit is to get my students to delve into the deeper

connotations of home. In order to answer the two-part essential question: What is a home and

what signifies a home, students will need to extend their thinking of home. Students will delve

deeper into the various connotations of home through a text-set revolving around home. Students

will have the opportunity to explore home as a shelter and the physical attributes that accompany

a home. They will have the opportunity to explore home as having emotional ties, memories and

images of family tied to it. Furthermore, students will explore how community plays a role in the

self-perception of home as well as ancestral roots. The ultimate goal is to enable students to

extend their thinking into their own self-perception of home and what gives them that sense of

belonging.

III. Learning Goals : Explain what learning goals you have set for students’ investigation of the big idea/essential question. Consider the following areas:

a. Development of content understanding (key concepts and ideas)

Students will be able to accommodate and assimilate their schema of home. Students will recognize the various connotations of home. Students will have an understanding of theme and how it relates to a story. Students will be able to answer text-dependent questions. Students will be able to use evidence from the text to support their opinion/inferences. Students will be able to discuss what makes someplace a home. Students will be able to articulate their own concept of home. Students will gain empathy for characters and situations in a story. Students will be able to monitor understanding while reading. Students will be able to make inferences based off of prior knowledge, text, and

visuals.

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Curriculum Unit Plan Students will be able to reproduce visualizations- “the movie” that plays in their mind

as they read/listen to reading. Students will be able to make text-self, text-text, and text-world connections. Students will be able to reason whether a place can only be a home if it’s in a home. Students will be able to make connections to their study of immigration.

b. Enabling students to experience the power of their minds and their capacities as learners and doers (powerful learning)

Students will engage in powerful thinking through participation in realistic fiction.

Students will engage in literature that contains difficult concepts such as homelessness and

immigration. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on these concepts and build empathy

and understanding for people in these various situations. Students will begin to reflect on how

despite difficulties, the characters in these stories convey persistence and exude hope. Students

will look for ways to make connections to their own life through building their self-perception of

home.

c. Development of intellectual and academic habits of mind, work, and discourse, including habits of independent or collaborative thinking and doing typical of readers, writers, speakers, creators, researchers and thinkers in the discipline (ways of knowing)

This unit will develop academic habits of mind primarily through building critical

thinking skills. Students will be asked to utilize the habits of good readers such as making

inferences using prior knowledge, text and visuals. Students will also monitor understanding by

asking questions and reflecting on what was read during read alouds. Students will be asked to

answer text-dependent questions and be explicitly taught how to paraphrase sections of a text to

help facilitate this monitoring of understanding. Students will also take on the role of readers by

making text-text, text- self, and text-world connections throughout reading. Most importantly,

students will be asked to work collaboratively during every lesson to build their knowledge.

d. Literacy development, including capabilities of proficient readers, writers, and speakers

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Curriculum Unit PlanStudents will develop as proficient readers, as they will be asked to exhibit strategies that

good readers use. They will be asked to make inferences, make predictions, monitor

understanding, ask questions, synthesize texts, and use evidence from the text to support claims.

Students will develop as proficient writers as they will be asked to write in complete

fourth grade sentences, using appropriate fourth grade vocabulary and using proper transitional

phrases. They will be asked to respond to writing prompts where they will be asked to write in

proper form, responding in the correct voice and tense as well as to the correct audience.

Students will also be asked to use fourth grade appropriate spelling. As students develop as

writers, they will further internalize the content allowing them to access my learning goals.

Finally, students will develop as speakers through the use of turn and talks, whole-class

discussions and one-on-ones. Students will also be asked to orally present some of their work

throughout the lesson.

e. Development of trust and the classroom as a learning community

This classroom will continue its development of trust, as students will engage in

collaborative work. Students will be expected to actively listen to one another’s ideas and extend

thinking through discussion. Students will be offered a comfortable space to share student

thinking. Students will be encouraged to share their ideas, which fosters student valuing and

becoming understanding of different perspectives. Students will also be reminded of their talk

moves, such as the appropriate means to agree or disagree with someone else’s opinion.

Furthermore, working as a whole class also serves to foster community building in our

classroom. Our classroom dynamic is already set up in a way where students are encouraged to

collaboratively work as well as engage in classroom discussions. It is an opportunity for students

to reflect, question and monitor their understanding. Students are well aware on how to be good

listeners and respect one another’s ideas. Students will get to practice this throughout the unit

and further extended our classroom community building.

IV. Personal, social, and cultural factors (yourself, your students, and learning) a. What assumptions are you making about why your plan will connect to your

Main South students? How are you taking into account any differences in

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Curriculum Unit Planyour socioeconomic, cultural, or racial background, gender, personality, approach to learning, or view of the world?

The concept of home can be a difficult one for many students. Going into my unit I

cannot assume that my students all have positive interactions with their own concept of home.

Knowing the demographics of the Main South area, I need to assume that some of my students

may come from insecure loving situations, insecure living situations, may not have any positive

connections to home or may be potentially homeless. Therefore, I must phrase things carefully as

I speak and must address any insecurities as they arise. If students feel uncomfortable with our

discussions/ activities, I will have alternative assignments ready for students.

b. How are you activating your students’ personal, social, and cultural capabilities and capacities in this plan?

Throughout this unit of study, students’ personal, social and cultural capabilities will be

activated in a variety of ways. Students will be asked to reflect on the concept of home at a

personal level, a social level and a cultural level. More specifically, students will be asked

throughout the unit to reflect on their own self-perception of home. They will be asked to linked

what their learning on a personal level. Additionally, students will be asked to reflect on

experiences, such as memories created within their homes. They will extend their concepts of

homes at a personal to include that at a community level. Once students recognize community

within their schema of home they will again extend by including cultural recognitions of home.

V. Rationale : Your rationale should show clearly your careful consideration of a full range of factors in planning your unit to ensure equitable support and meaningful, authentic, and substantial learning for all students, taking into account:

a. Learning goals : Explain why your big idea/essential question and your learning goals are important for your discipline and meaningful for your students.

Going into this unit, I wanted to provide my students with a powerful learning experience.

It is my mission to not only bring my students to become a step closer to becoming proficient

readers, writers, speakers and listeners, but to give them literature that they can connect to. It is

paramount that my students be introduced to high interest literature to provoke them into wanting

to become life-long readers. Furthermore, I want to provide my students the opportunity to read

authentic stories that they can reflect on and make text-self, text-text and text- world

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Curriculum Unit Planconnections. I believe that by focusing my study on the concept of home and the theme of hope,

my students will draw deeper meaning from the literature as they can relate to content on a more

personal level. My unit is meaningful as it gives students an opportunity to build their reasoning

skills while also citing evidence, something that will become important for them in later years.

b. Curriculum standards : Explain how the big idea/essential question connects to the Guiding Principles in the MA curriculum frameworks. Identify which learning standards are addressed and how.

SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Throughout every lesson, students will be asked to engage in turn and talks, whole-group discussions and one-on-ones.

W.4.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience

Students will be asked to respond to multiple writing prompts throughout the unit. Students will also be asked to construct their own poem in lesson 5 that follows a specific

format.

W.4.8 Recall relevant information from experiences or gather relevant information from print and digital sources; take notes and categorize information, and provide a list of sources.

Students will be asked to use experiences and memories to build their schema of home as well as their self-perception of home.

SL.4.2 Paraphrase portions of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

During each read aloud, students will be asked to construct oral gist statements or sum up what has happened thus far in the story. In addition, students will be asked to participate in a visualization activity in lesson 1 in which

RL.4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

Throughout the read aloud, students will be prompted to answer text-dependent questions citing evidence as well as making inferences about the text using prior knowledge, text or visual cues.

c. Students’ backgrounds and readiness : What strengths, capacities, and interests, in terms of their content understanding (prior knowledge), academic and literacy development, personal and cultural abilities, and

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Curriculum Unit Plandevelopment as a learning community, are you taking into account in planning this unit?

This unit focuses heavily on student’s prior knowledge to accommodate and assimilate

their schemes to include information presented in our text study. Students will be bringing in

what they know into this unit to help guide and facilitate their learning. Furthermore, students in

my classroom are active hands-on learners as well as artistic learners. For this reason, many of

the activities in this unit focus on creativity and producing works that highlight and further

elaborate our stories.

d. Student needs : What particular needs of your students—academic, social, personal, language (ELLs)—have you taken into account in planning the unit?

Many students in my class excel in collaborative work. For this reason, I have

incorporated many turn and talks to give students opportunities to engage. According to Daniels

and Zemelman, turn and talks are great to keep students active and engaged: “turn and talks

prevent students from drifting and losing focus when you need to present information, by

presenting a sociable interlude during which the students digest and reflect on the ideas” (134). It

is means to access their thinking by way of allowing students to gather their thoughts before

raising their hands (or failing to). It ensures that all students get to process ideas with their own

words, rather than just a few students reciting an answer. They will be given opportunities to

share their reasoning and to practice making it comprehensible.

Additionally, because this unit was built to include ample opportunities for discussion,

my ELL students will have more opportunities to engage in substantive conversation. According

to Gibbons, students need to engage in substantive conversation. That is, they need to be

involved in extended talk around big ideas. The process of taking part in substantive

conversations leads to an increased understanding of subject content, since it creates space for

students to explore new ideas, clarify their understandings, initiate questions, and make their

reasoning visible to peers (Gibbons 25). Not only are students developing content understanding,

but also they are developing language skills. The opportunity for extended talk allows students a

chance to practice vocabulary and grammar and enhance their language development.

To enhance their time for writing, students will be supported through a whole-class

discussion as well as turn and talks before the writing prompt. This period of time will serve to

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Curriculum Unit Plangive those students who struggle coming up with ideas to be able to collaborate with other peers

for a planning period. According to Gibbons, this allows students to build a bridge to written

language: “encouraging literate talk means giving learners opportunities to use the kind of

spoken language that is closer to written language and providing them with a chance to

“rehearse” this more complete and explicit language in talk with others” (141). This will allow

students to be gradually immersed into their writing with support from peers.

Finally, students will be supported through sentence starters, outlines, and modeling to

scaffold students into their thinking. It will help foster an environment with a low affective filter

to give students the confidence to participate in the content.

e. Research- and evidence-based best practice ideas : Explain how research and best practice ideas have informed your plan.

As aforementioned, this unit is heavy on oral skills and switches out writing for a more

creative means of output. According to Gibbons, teachers should give students different means to

showcase their understanding. This unit focuses on art as that medium. Integrating the Arts

Across the Content Areas was the main contributor into encouraging me to incorporate the arts

into my unit.

According to the authors, the arts are paramount to strengthening curriculum. Integrating

art into this lesson is my attempt to allow students to tap into their creativity. Most importantly,

arts integration provides multiple ways for students to make sense of what they learn and makes

their learning visible. In other words, it enables students to construct understanding and

demonstrate their understanding. It challenges students to take information and do something

with it to build deeper understanding. Using art, through photographs and drawings, as a medium

for this unit will encourage my students to propel their thinking into the various connotations of

home.

Additionally, in the Book Whisperer, Miller focuses her efforts on designing a classroom

environment that engages her students, based on Cambourne’s conditions for learning (p 34-36).

She cites that “we can spend hours determining what students should know and be able to do

crafting instruction to accomplish the desired results, but without considering students’ right to

an engaging, trustworthy, risk-free place in which to learn, what we teach will always fall short”

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Curriculum Unit Plan(37). Taking a creative approach to this unit was a means for me to foster this type of

environment within the classroom.

Within this unit, I put an emphasis on introducing a variety of interesting texts, something

that Atwell prescribes to. I spent much of my time finding texts that I thought would be authentic

for students; books that they could relate to on some level. I spent much of my time finding

books that had high quality artwork to draw student’s attention; artwork ranged from collages to

chalk drawing to beautiful watercolor. I spent much of my time finding books that would engage

students with its interesting plot line and allow students to reflectively think about home as it

related to my learning goals. It is my hope that by building up the classroom community,

fostering a low affective filter environment filled with meaningful discussions and writing,

wonderful literature, and artwork, my students will become life-long readers.

In the end, “the vicarious experience of reading can shape our essence, change us, just as

firsthand experience can. Experience seems to be as transfusible as blood. For kids who know

reading as a personal art, every day is a transfusion. Every day they engage with literature that

enables them to know things, feel things, imagine things, hope for things, become people they

never could have dreamed without the transforming power of books, books, books” (Atwell, 19).

Through my unit, I hope to encourage this experience among my students. My goal is for

students to connect to literature and take something of meaning away.

VI. Assessments : It is essential for both you and your students that your formative and culminating assessments clearly show the extent to which students have achieved learning goals.

a. Explain your main assessments and why they are appropriate for your learning goals.

Informally, students will be assessed on their ability to engage in productive talk through

turn and talks and whole-class discussions. I will filter through the room and informally assess

student’s ability to produce substantive talk and remain on task.

My main assessments for this unit include a visualization activity where students draw

the “movie” playing in their mind as they read, an art piece of their view of the community from

their window and how they hope it will change in 10 years, 2 writing prompts asking students to

think critically about the topic at hand, and finally by their production of an Where am I From

poem. It was my main intention to make my main assessments contain a component of creativity.

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Curriculum Unit PlanI believe having a creative aspect to my assessments will help students engage in the material

and to enhance authenticity.

b. How will students know what to expect and the criteria for good work?

Students will be given clear expectations and guidelines orally and in written format on

handouts. I will also be providing models for the assignments that students can refer back to.

c. How will students and parents learn about students’ overall academic progress from these assessments?

Students will receive continual feedback by means of progress reports and report cards.

Our binder planners are also a means of daily communication where I can relay information

about progress to student’s parents. Students will also have the opportunity to bring home their

work to show parents.

VII. Unit Calendar a. Provide a calendar of key learning activities, learning strategies, and

assessments for your anticipated timeframe for the unit.Teacher Will Student Will Assessment

LAP 1

“Home as a physical structure”

Facilitate Discussion:What is a home?

Write down student ideas on anchor chart.

Interactive read-aloud:Let’s Go HomeThe Wonderful Things About A House by Cynthia Rylant I will not be

showing the pictures this time through.

Ask questions to probe thinking and to help students monitor their thinking: What color is the

Turn & talk in pairs

Visualize the story:During the read aloud students will visualize the story and recreate their interpretations of the rooms that Cynthia Rylant describes on their handout.

While viewing pictures make connections between their interpretation

Informally assess participation and engagement in lesson

Formal:Visualization handout.Writing prompt.

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Curriculum Unit Plansofa?

What food is in the kitchen?

Does the tub have bubbles in it?

What is the color of the blanket on the bed? Does it have a design?

Is the bedroom neat and tidy or are their toys on the floor?

Walk through pictures

Introduce writing prompt:

Write a description of what makes your home special? Your writing should include a description of a special room in your house like the way Cynthia Rylant wrote about homes in her book.

Read model/sample

Filter around the room helping students as needed and checking for engagement.

and the actual pictures.

Engage in writing prompt.

Draw a picture of their room.

(Differentiated prompt: lower language learners will be asked to draw a house in their room and label the parts of the room).

LAP 2

“Home as being wherever your family

is”

Facilitate discussion on whether a home has to be in a house.

Interactive read aloud:Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting

Discussion Questions: What are some

Actively listen to read aloud.

Turn & talk with a

Informally assess student engagement and active participation in class discussion

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Curriculum Unit Planof the things that the boy and the dad do to not get caught living in the airport?

Do you think the airport is the boy’s home? Why/Why not?

What makes the airport home for the boy?

What’s the theme/central message of the story?

partner.Independently think about discussion questions.Engage in discussion.Monitor Understanding

LAP 3

“Home as having emotional ties, images

of family, and memories”

Facilitate Discussion:

“The title of this book is A Shelter in Our Car. What is a shelter? What makes something a shelter? What do you think this story is going to be about?”

Interactive Read aloud:A Shelter in Our Car by Monica Gunning

P.7: Why did Zettie and her mom move to America?

p. 16: What do you think? Why can’t Zettie’s mother “do some other kind of work?”

Turn & Talk:

Discuss predictions

Engage in story

Answer text-dependent questions

Informally assess student engagement and active participation

Formal: writing prompt

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Curriculum Unit Plan p. 19: What do

you know about Benjie? How do you know?

p. 25: What will happen next? What will Zettie do? What would you do?

p. 30: Why does Mama say, “How would you like to sleep in a bed all summer

instead of in our car?”

Facilitate Discussion:

“Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling”. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

Filter through turn & talk groups

Promote whole class discussion

Put writing prompt on Elmo

Turn & Talk:

“Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling”.

Discuss as a whole group

Answer:“Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling”. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

LAP 4

“Including community within the

Read-aloud the message from the author (Jeannie Baker).

Actively ListenMonitor Understanding


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Curriculum Unit Planschema of home”

Read the synopsis excerpt from the beginning of the book

Show the collages in the book Home

Ask students to find similarities and differences in the collages.

Facilitate discussion on how Tracy’s neighborhood has changed over the years.

Show photographs of Worcester from the past with a primary focus on Clark University, Main Street, and Crystal Park.

Promote discussion on how Worcester has changed and our hopes for Worcester.

Facilitate Discussion:Do you consider Worcester to be part of your home?

Explain Activity

Filter through classroom, ask questions,answer student misconceptions, and

Analyze collages from the book

Look for similarities and differences in the collages from the book.

Look at photographs and look for ways Worcester has changed.

Turn & Talk:Do you consider Worcester to be part of your home?

Draw a picture of the scene from your own window.

Draw a picture of what you hope the scene from your window will look like

Formal: window collage

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Curriculum Unit Planprobe students into further thinking.

in 10 years.

LAP 5

“Home as being a place where your ancestors resided”

Facilitate Discussion:Looking at the title of this book, Going Home, what do you predict the book is going to be about?

Interactive read-aloud:-Stop every couple of pages and create a verbal gist statement to monitor student understanding of the story.

Facilitate Discussion:Do you think that home can be two places? Why or Why not?

Probe students to thinking about how this book connects to our immigration studies.

Introduce Where I am From poems by showing a model of a poem from the character Carlos’ perspective.

Explain activity:Students will write their own Where I am From poems.

Facilitate Sharing

Turn & Talk with a partner

Listen respectfully to the story.

Turn & Talk

Writing:Where I am From poem.

Share poems in a sharing circle on the rug.


Formal:Where I am From Poem

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Curriculum Unit PlanCircle

b. Explain your sequence of activities—why does this particular order make sense in light of your learning goals and rationale for the unit?

This order makes sense, as I want this unit to be a progression. Students will move from

including smaller networks into their schema of home towards including larger networks into

their schemas of home. More specifically, students move from understanding home as a physical

structure, home as having emotional ties, community having a role in concept of home, and

finally home as being tied to culture and familial roots. Having the all the different connotations

of home will set students up for success when building their own self-perception of home.

VIII. Family and Community Involvement : a) Are there possible ways for you to actively involve parents in their child’s academic

activities and performance, and communicate clearly with them?

Yes, a monthly newsletter goes home where we can inform parents on what is happening in

the class. Planners serve as a communication tool that is utilized within the classroom which

parents can receive updates on their child's progress.

b) Are there possible resources—such as guest presenters, A/V, field trips, and material artifacts—from colleagues, families, and the community for you to draw on to enhance learning?

During LAP 4, after reading Home, I will show primary source photographs of what Worcester

used to look like so they can see how their community has changed over time.

Texts:

Let’s Go Home: The Wonderful Things About A House by Cynthia Rylant

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting

A Shelter in Our Car by Monica Gunning

Home by Jeannie Baker

Going Home by Eve Bunting

IX. Reflectiona. In what ways did your unit reflect the Ways of Knowing Philosophy?

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My unit reflected the Ways of Knowing Philosophy in terms of authentic thinking. Each

of my chosen texts was relatable to student’s lives in some way or another. Each book embodied

the genre of realistic fiction to enhance authenticity. My goal was for students to feel a

connection to these books and be able to draw out the real-life scenarios and themes present in

each of the books.

Furthermore, my unit reflected the Ways of Knowing Philosophy in terms of critical

thinking. Students were able to embody the role of readers, writers and speakers when reflecting

on text. Students were able to collaboratively think and respond to prompts about the text.

Additionally, students were able to effectively monitor their understanding. While reading,

students asked questions, such as plot clarification or what a specific vocabulary word meant.

b. To what extent did your unit adhere to or vary from the first complete draft of your plan, and, were your original goals achieved? (Give specific examples.)

The only aspect from my first draft that remained was the concept of home. I knew from

the start that I wanted my students to add to their schema of home through a text set. It was my

goal for students to connect the concept of home to their immigration unit- more specifically

understanding why it might have been difficult for immigrants to leave their homes.

The biggest piece of my first draft that was nixed was the thematic study on hope. With a

two-fold big idea, there was too much that I was trying to achieve in 6 lessons. Students would

not have gotten the time that they would have needed to delve into theme and symbolism. With

the nix of the thematic study came the nixing of the books Dandelions by Eve Bunting and The

Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. The books focused more on the symbol of hope and did not

align with my new focus on a sequential text-set on the study of home. In their stead, I added the

book, Going Home, by Eve Bunting and rearranged my texts in a manner that aligned more with

my goals.

Additionally, some of the activities in my initial draft changed. In my initial lesson plan

of Let’s Go Home, I wanted to do an I Am Poem, but felt that it fit more appropriately with our

study of culture and roots. I decided instead to do a visualization activity to hook them into our

study of home. In lesson 3, I decided rather than discuss where hope can be seen in the story- a

discussion that would have better served my previous learning goals, that we would explore the

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Curriculum Unit Planstatement: “Home is not a place, it’s a feeling”. This seemed to align more with my learning

goals.

Overall, students achieved my learning goals of my new essential question throughout the

unit. Students were able to add to their anchor chart after reading the various texts allowing me

to see how their schemas were adapting. Furthermore, through reviewing each activity and

reflecting on individual lessons, it became apparent that they came away with an understanding

that home isn’t merely a shelter, but has emotions tied to it. They were able to recognize the

distinct facets that signify a home. Furthermore, students were able to extend their knowledge to

their immigration unit and to their own self-perception of home.

c. How did your unit mesh with the students’ previous knowledge and skills? How did you either build on what they already knew or help them develop the necessary background understanding to be successful in your unit?

Throughout the unit I primarily relied on student’s prior knowledge to facilitate student

learning. I built upon this prior knowledge by having student’s reflect on his or her own concept

of home as it relates to the lesson. Students were continually assessed on prior knowledge and

development of content. Students were to use evidence from the text to back up their statements.

Each text was chosen to gradually build upon student’s prior knowledge. The first text, Let’s Go

Home was chosen to build student’s concept of a home as a physical structure. The second and

third texts, Fly Away Home and A Shelter in Our Car respectively, focused on the concept of

homelessness and the emotional connections to a home. In lesson 4, the text Home was used to

include community in student’s concept of home. And finally, in lesson 5, students linked culture

to their schema of home by using the text Going Home. Furthermore, an anchor chart was

present throughout the whole unit that students could add to as things were added and removed

from their schemas.

d. What did students learn from the unit as a whole? Support your conclusions

using specific examples from student work. This may include quotes, excerpts, and/or annotated attachments.

Overall, the two most important things students learned as a whole from this unit of study

was one, there are many connotations of home- there are many ways that people define home

and ways to determine what makes a home special. They understand that everyone has a

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Curriculum Unit Plandifferent perspective of what home means and that many people’s homes look different. The

second biggest take away was that students build empathy for people in particularly difficult

situations.

To begin, in lesson 1, students learned about the movie that plays in their head as they

read Let’s Go Home. Students nailed the visualization activity. Jasmine, see below, as well as

many others in the class, nailed drawing her inner movie. She was able to draw many of Cynthia

Rylant’s descriptions, such as the couple sitting the rocking chair next to the fireplace.

At the beginning of lesson 2, students weren’t able to pick up on the fact that a home

doesn’t necessarily have to be in a house. They focused more on the physical attributes of the

house, such that it is a shelter that holds food, water and clothes. This was my specific intention,

as the previous lesson students studied the physical attributes of a home. By the end of the

lesson, after we did a read aloud of Fly Away Home, students were able to pinpoint that a home

is a home because your family lives there.

One of the main goals of lesson 2 and 3 was that student would be able to build empathy

for people in difficult situations. After reading Fly Away Home, students were able to build

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Curriculum Unit Planempathy for the boy and his father. Students were able to really pinpoint that the bird was a

symbol of hope (without saying it in those words and without prompting). Many students said

that they hoped the boy would be able to escape the “window” and have a home with his dad.

Throughout our whole group discussion in lesson 3, many students made comments such as “I

feel so bad for Zettie and her mom”, “I hope that they find somewhere to live!” and “This book

makes me sad”. Throughout both readings, students truly began to reflect on homelessness and

began building their empathy.

In lesson 4, students used their current knowledge of Worcester to help learn about how

the community has changed over time. They learned how to analyze primary source documents.

They were also able to make hopes of how Worcester would change in time, based off of how

the girl Tracy’s home changed in Home. By the end of lesson 4, students started to begin

including community into their schema of home.

Finally in lesson 5, students began to include culture into their schema of home. They

were beginning to understand the importance of culture in defining one’s family. They still need

more work to do, but this lesson served as a great foundation to build upon in the future.

In the end, students have different concepts of home. Paola was able to recognize home as a

place where her belongings remain, but also “where you think about stuff like cooking in your

kitchen, or sleeping in your bed”. When talking with her one-on-one, she was able to vocalize

her opinion even more, by saying that your home is where your memories are and she made a

connection to our first book, Let’s Go Home by Cynthia Rylant. She was able to use the

descriptive, visual factors of her home and connect that to emotions and memories to come up

with her answer.

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Sebastian Diaz thinks of home as both a feeling and a place. He recognizes the physicality of a

home, but is also able to recognize the emotions and familial ties to a home.

Sebastian Delgado sees home as a place of memories. Finally, level 3 ELL student Gilmary

recognizes, “A home is a place where you stay to grow”.

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While talking with her one-on-one, she elaborated by talking about all the memories associated

with home and that home could not be without her mother and sister.

Throughout this unit, students learned many things. Not only did they come away with

many ideas and representations of their homes, but also they came away with more proficient

analytical and critical reasoning skills. Every lesson students were asked to make inferences,

predictions and use evidence to back up any claim they made. Students were most successful in

this aspect of the unit.

e. What did YOU learn? What did you learn in terms of using literature in the classroom as you created and taught the lessons? What did you learn about your students in the course of observing and teaching them? Make connections to relevant course readings where appropriate.

From this unit, I learned that my students can handle difficult subjects and texts. I learned

that they appreciate the artwork of literature and that it draws their attention. I also learned that

an interesting plot line holds their attention; it motivates them. They will remain silent the whole

time (“they delve into the reading zone”) and their hands shoot up to respond to questions. I

learned that my students can hold deep conversations and have insightful reflections on life.

During lesson 3, we had an amazing discussion on bullying. They had concerns about it and self-

facilitated a whole discussion. I sat back and listened in amazement. They were able to reflect on

reasons why a person may be a bully- they may have been bullied themselves, or they may feel

insecure. They were able to reflect on a time they may have been bullied and how it made them

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Curriculum Unit Planfelt. And finally, they reflected on ways to stop bullies- by offering them friendship or telling a

trusted adult. From this discussion, it became apparent that if my students feel passionate about a

subject, there’s not directed the conversation.

In another conversation, my students reflected on being homeless. They reflected on

ways people can become homeless, what they can do to combat homelessness, and expressed

genuine concern. Overall, my students amaze me when you present a social issue and allow them

to discuss it. They are little activists at heart and I am very hopeful for their future.

In the end, I learned that book choice is everything. Miller and Atwell spend chapters

elaborating on book choice and the importance of choosing the right books- although some

books may not be one-size-fits-all. If I didn’t choose the books that I did, my students would not

have had such a meaningful learning experience with this unit. They wouldn’t have facilitated

great discussions, they wouldn’t have produced amazing pieces of work, and they wouldn’t have

responded thoughtfully to my writing prompts. Choosing authentic literature made all the

difference when it came to learning about the concept of home.

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Documents

wordpress.clarku.eduwordpress.clarku.edu/.../files/2016/05/Humanities-CUP-… · Web viewConsider the following areas: ... will be asked to draw a house in their room and label