Changemakers Unit Plan: Exploring the Power of Voice (TCRWP aligned)
"If today's children grow up with literature that is multicultural diverse, and decolonized, we can begin the work of healing our nation and world through humanizing stories." (Thomas, 2016).
As a teacher, I've committed to adopting a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy in my classroom practice. This means that I vow to address and affirm my students diverse needs, drawing upon their funds of knowledge in regards to race, ethnicity, language, class, ability, orientation, religious affiliation, and other identities.
But what does that mean in practice?
It means that I seek to incorporate my students' languages, culture, and beliefs into all aspects of my teaching practice. Not only that, but I look for a diverse array of texts that will teach my students about the many vibrant communities around them, and the problems faced by people within those spaces.
With that in mind, I designed this unit of interactive read alouds to focus on people of color who influenced change in their communities through the power of their voices. In my third grade placement, the students had no social studies period, and there was a dearth of diverse literature in the classroom. This was especially poignant, considering that all of my students were of color; they had little exposure to any people in books who looked like them. At the time, my students were completing the TCRWP Persuasive Writing Unit, which focus on letter writing and speech writing about problems in the school or neighborhood. I designed this read aloud unit to align with the writing unit, so that students would be inspired by the true stories, and see concrete ways that change can be achieved in their own communities.
Changemakers Unit Plan
This theme for this unit is "how writing can be used as a tool for justice and change", and centers around narrative nonfiction texts. I choose texts featuring Black, Latinx, and Muslim individuals, to show a variety of social issues and identities. As we read through the texts together, a number of questions were raised by students regarding race, religion, laws, and language. Although the purpose of the unit was to expose students to inspiring POC, it also allowed us to discuss social issues in a historically-based and relevant way. Following the end of read alouds and the writing unit, students wrote letters to the borough president, detailing changes they thought he should make in their communities.
*Click here for a pdf version of the unit plan.
