Warriors Don’t Cry Unit Plan Teaching Methods

Warriors Don't Cry Unit Plan

Symantha Reilly Annie Daly

Jordan Desrochers Kristen Rood

Teaching Methods

1. Daily Journals Description: Daily journals will be utilized in the first 10 min of class during the reading of the book. Students will receive a prompt and write 3-5 paragraphs in response. Purpose: These journals will be used to monitor students' reading and comprehension during the reading of the book. These journals will also be used in their final portfolio to demonstrate a growth in critical thinking and writing skills.

2. Found objects/newspaper articles.

Description: Students will bring in an online news article, a newspaper

article, or a book about the integration of schools or even the civil rights

movement as a whole.

Purpose: This is a great cross curricular activity that really immerses students in the history of integration; we want students to be able to see how important the history behind this story is. Any chance that they can get to educate themselves about Melba's world will help them understand the book much better. 3. Mass Media Description: Students will bring in any radio, tv, or movie clips that they can find from the integration time period to share with the class. Purpose: Similar to bringing in news articles, bringing in media can be an even more engaging way of immersing students in the history of that time period. Playing a clip that students found in the beginning of class can get them interested in the days lesson and help them get into the right mindset. 4. Autobiography Description: Students will write a 2-page autobiography/memoir in which they describe a major event in their life OR as another member of the Little Rock Nine. Purpose: This assignment is designed to evaluate student's ability to connect a the past with their lives today. This paper gives students the opportunity to reflect on Melba's story and connect it with their own. It shows the teacher that they understand the genre of biography/ autobiography and what they have read. 5. Discrimination activity Description: assign cards, 4 people are assigned to be integrators,

everyone else is a white classmate. The white classmates will ignore the

black ones; the black ones will try to talk to them and be ignored.

Purpose: This activity lets students see just what a difficult and isolating experience it would have been to be one of the integrators. It helps put them "in the other persons shoes" and empathize with the characters. When they can feel a little bit of what the integrators went through they

may feel more interested and invested in the story. 6. Target the teacher

Description: The students will write down a response to a prompt on the board from their journal and then will be asked to share them by ripping out the page and throwing the response towards the front of the classroom for the teacher to read. Purpose: This allows the students to share their responses in a risk free way and really gets the conversation moving. Also, the teacher has some powers of discretion in this activity and can choose not to read any inappropriate responses. 7. Speed Debate Description: Students will be assigned sides for a debate about integrating schools from either the NAACP or the Arkansas point of view. They will have some background knowledge about the opinions from both of these sides from reading the book and from the history portion at the beginning of this unit. They will be assigned their point of view and for homework they will come up with some points that they would like to bring up in their debate. The NAACP students will sit in a circle facing outward while the Arkansas government students sit in a circle facing their fellow students. The inside students will get 30 seconds to present their argument and vice versa. Then each student is allowed a 30 second rebuttal. The outside students then move one seat to the right and they begin again. Afterwards we have a whole group discussion about the debates. Purpose: This debate helps students start developing their persuasive skills in a non-threatening, fun way. The teacher can find out if students are making connections with the text and what they need help on, both historically and literary. This debate style also takes a lot of the mass intimidation out of the activity and gives students the opportunity to really listen and respond to their peers' points. 8. News Clips Description: Students will write news articles about events in the text that they find significant and a rationale about why they thought that they event deserved a news article. Purpose: Warrior's Don't Cry features many actual news headings from the local and national newspapers that Melba was seeing on a daily basis. Many things happen to Melba specifically that students could create a news article around. This assignment would show that students are understanding the text and the importance that it has in society, and personally. Writing a rationale show that teacher that they haven't arbitrarily selected something from the text, but instead have thought about the implications of that particular section of the text and have realized something important about it. 9. Lecture Description: Self-Explanatory- teacher lectures and students listen. Purpose: We think that there must be some learning that occurs first in

order for an activity to test and expand on what we have learned can take

place, especially when teaching this book where there is a lot of history

involved that must be understood.

10. Fakebook

Description: Students will randomly choose a card with a person/ perspective on it that they must make a "fakebook" page for, ie member of the Little Rock Nine, a teacher at the high school, 101st airborne soldier. They will use evidence from the reading, plus all the historical background that they have been provided with to create a persona that interacts with others on the fakebook site. They will have a certain number of posts that they must create and notes that they must write to meet the requirements. This fakebook site much show an understanding for different perspectives at the time and how those different perspectives shaped the experience for Melba and many others during the era of integration. Purpose: Putting the students in the shoes of people at that time, in a way that incorporates technology that most of them will be very familiar with. This assignment will give students the opportunity to more fully understand how people at the time would be reacting to each other. It will also show that they understand why those perspectives are important in Melba's story. 11. Group discussion Description: Again, pretty self explanatory. We would use this mostly after we have completed an activity to both gauge what we have learned and how well the activity met the goals that we set out for it. Purpose: Group discussion is a necessary tool that is most useful for asking and answering questions and for making sure everyone is on the same page before moving on. However, we think it would be helpful sometimes to lay out goals and things we need to discuss beforehand to prevent the conversation from getting off track. 12. Partner Read Description: Students pair up and read the selection together. They then answer prepared open ended questions in a think, pair, share activity. Purpose: Getting students to work together to answer questions and analyze a text helps with their comprehension and group work skills. This method gives students the opportunity to help each other with reading and then develop ideas independently, as a small group and as a whole class. 13. Final Portfolio Description: For a final assessment of the unit students will complete

a final portfolio. This portfolio will include their journals, autobiography,

news clips and their fakebook websites. Each piece will include a

reflection about what they learned while doing that specific assignment

and how it contributed to understanding of the rest of the unit and the text.

Purpose: This final portfolio will show where the students started and

where they ended up in both their reading and their critical thinking skills.

The reflection will give a good idea as to what worked during the unit and

what didn't, as well as what students learned as a whole.

Lesson Plan

Week One Monday: Introduction to the history of Melba's time: Civil Rights Movement

 Begin with a brief prompt on the board: What are some things that you already know about the civil rights movement? Also, if you know anything about the integration efforts of this period, what do you know about that?

Civil rights movement video clip: ?

v=bX_S7y_iiMg (2:33-on talks about the Little Rock Integration

specifically)

Begin Civil Rights Lecture HW: Mass media activity: Bring in an online news clip, youtube clip, etc.

relating to the civil rights movement Tuesday:

Share mass media activity Finish up civil rights history slide show and have group discussion about

what we have seen and learned.

Wednesday:

Introduce Final portfolio assignment (described in methods section

above). We want them to be thinking about it for the whole unit.

Begin discussing the autobiography as a genre; remind students that it involves real events that actually happened and because of that we read it slightly different than a novel that is open to interpretation.

Introduce brief overview of Melba's participation as a "little rock nine" member.

Thursday: More in depth lesson about integration period in particular; Brown v. Board case and the Arkansas integration and Little Rock Nine will be the main focuses

Friday:

Introduce book and pass out in class, read ch 1 in class. Also, we will

introduce the daily journal prompts that will be done in the beginning of

class and will ask a question about the reading from the night before.

HW: Ch 2

Week Two

Monday:

Journal Prompt: After the incident that happened to Melba on her way home from school would you still volunteer to integrate Central High School? Why or why not?

Read ch 3 in class with partner read HW: Ch 4 Tuesday:

Journal Prompt: Imagine you are a reporter that is covering the first day

of integration; would you feel compelled to step in and help the students?

Why or why not?

Discrimination activity

HW: Ch 5

Wednesday:

Journal Prompt: In this chapter, Melba has a typical reaction to all the violence and attention that is directed towards her; she just wants to be a normal girl. If you were Melba's age and in her situation would you want

to keep going to school for the "greater good" or would you quit and return to your normal life?

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