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Stephen Salisbury EDC 448 Dr. Coiro 11/1/07 Text Sets

The unit the class is starting is going to be on the Civil rights movement. The lessons will begin with a simple text called Ellington Was Not A Street, which gives an introduction of the key players in the movement. They will also read poetry of the time and a biography on Martin Luther King Jr. The class is a ninth grade college prep class.

Print Resources:

Shange, Ntozake. (1983). Ellington Was Not A Street. New York: Simon and Schulster Books for Young Readers.

• The book tells of a story of a little girl whose father was Duke Ellington. The little girl goes through many people who used to visit her house, people such as W. E. B DuBois, and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. There even a really good line in the story, “DuBlois walked up my father’s stairs, hummed some tune over me, sleeping in the company of men who changed the world.” • I selected this book because it is an easy read, not much writing, but it gives a great list of people who were very critical to the Civil Rights Movement. What I really liked about the book was at the end of the story it gives a brief description about each of the characters mentioned in it. • What I would ask of each student would be to read the story and the descriptions about the characters then to write a 1-2 page report about that person. Something very simple and basic, its main purpose is to get the students familiar with some of the important players in the Civil Rights Movement.

Allen, Chude Pam. (1964). To Be Twenty Again [Poem]. • Chude Pam Allen writes this poem when she is thinking back at her twenties when she was fighting for the Civil Rights. It gives a really good idea of what she was feeling, why she was fighting for others rights and how not just African Americans were fighting, but also white middle class youths like she was. It gives a perspective from a person who was there in the trenches. • I selected this poem because it gives great details and emotions of why people were fighting so hard for civil rights. It also gives a great perspective of a white American who was fighting for the rights of African Americans. • With this poem the students will get an idea of what people were doing and why. They will also get a sense of how the movement went outside of the African American community and spread to many young men and women of other cultures, nationalities, and colors.

Bruns, Roger. (2006). Martin Luther King Jr.: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. • This book is a biography on Martin Luther King Jr. • I chose this biography because Martin Luther King is the main face behind the Civil Rights Movement, he is going to be the most familiar to the students and having them learn about who he was can understand what he believed in and get an idea of how he was influenced by Gandhi. Then the students will then get to get the ideas of peaceful protests and sit-ins. • I think its important for the students to read this because it requires them to get to know who was the iconic face behind the Civil Rights movement. They will know why there is a government holiday celebrating this man rather then just having the day off from school, they will know why they are celebrating it.

Shabazz, Attallah. (1987). The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told To Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books. • This is the autobiography of Malcolm X told in an interview to Alex Haley. It was later completed after the death of Malcolm X. It is a excellent primary source of another iconic figure in Civil Rights. More radical then Martin Luther King, its shows how Malcolm X went from a criminal to a freedom fighter. • I chose this book because it gives the students a much different person to look at. A person who had similar beliefs and ideals but had a more radical approach on how to get Civil Rights. • With this book the students will get another perspective of how to get Civil Rights. With this the students can compare and contrast the beliefs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

King Jr, Martin Luther. (1997). I Have A Dream. New York: Scholastic Press. • This is a picture book depicting Martin Luther Kings famous, “I Have A Dream,” speech. The famous speech begins about King’s dream, “That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The speech says that King dreams a day where people will not be judged for being black but for having opinions of ideas. • I selected this speech because it is very important for American history. It really outlines why people were fighting for Civil Rights. • The main purpose for students reading this speech is to get them to know why people were getting beat and arrested for civil rights.

Media Resources:

Alan Parker. (Director) & Chris Gerolmo (Writer). (1988). Mississippi Burning. [Motion Picture]. New York: Orion Picture Corporation. • This movie is about an FBI case where three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi went missing. The FBI comes into this small town and tries to get the facts, and uncover the truth about the KKK and what happened to the three men. • I chose this movie because it shows the people who worked against the Civil Rights movement, groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups, which tried to put an end to the movement. It gives the students another perspective of what people thought. • The students will have to first sign a permission slip because of the ‘R’ rating, but I think the movie will really show students what people in the movement had to go against.

Nossiter, A. (2007, September 22). Black Youth, Conviction in Beating Voided, Will Stay in Jail. The New York Times. • The story is about the Jena Six, a group of African American students who got arrested for beating up a white student. The story goes even further back when African American students weren’t allowed to stand under a tree because of their skin. They then got picked on and retaliated and got arrested. • I chose this article to prove that there is still racism and discrimination in today’s society, even after people struggled and fought hard to get Civil Rights. • The use of this text is to get the students aware that racism and discrimination still goes on in today’s society. It wasn’t just going on in the 1960’s but still to this day.

Online Interactive Resources:

Web quest: http://ttt.pugetsoundcenter.org/projects/2000/web33/ (I couldn’t find out how to cite this site, so I gave the website. It is also a very good web quest). • This is the description of the web quest from the website. “It is the year 3000. Efforts to protect the environment have failed. The trees are gone, and there has been no paper for 100 years. History has been passed from one generation to the next through the oral tradition (people talking to other people), the way parents taught their children before there was the written word. A very old African-American woman, Carolyn, is lying on her deathbed. Carolyn’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, is at her bedside. Carolyn feels compelled to tell about the experiences of African-Americans more than 1000 years ago during the Civil Rights Movement. This information was given to Carolyn by her grandmother many years before. Now, Elizabeth is about to hear the story for the first time before her grandmother dies.” This web quest is really creative and allows students to use that creativity. • I chose this web quest because it gets students to think about how they would summarize the Civil Rights. So they have to have a clear grasp on the material before they can tell the story of what they will tell their children. • The students can use this web quest as a culminating project at the end of the unit to show their understanding of the Civil Rights. It will also give them a sense of what the Civil Rights was all about. By giving a summary of the movement it requires students to learn the material to get a better grade on it.

National Civil Rights Museum. (2003). http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/gallery/movement.asp • This website is the national museum for civil rights and covers everything one would need to know about the Civil Rights Movement. It covers certain topics like the Little Rock Nine, Brown Vs. the Board of Education, and sit-ins. It gives a detailed description of all the topics; the ones mention above were just a few. • I chose this site because it gives a really good synopsis of what each event did. It could be used as great study guide and a good teaching tool. Teachers can use it to get a sense of what the National Civil Rights Museum says about certain events. • Students can use this website to study, and get a summary of key events if they are cloudy on some things. This website clears things up.

Instructional Resources:

Barbret, J, Circrone, J, Drochak, S, Suroway, N, Walden, D. Civil Rights in the 60’s. • This is a very detailed unit plan. It consists of objectives, lesson, rubrics and topics for each day of the unit. The lessons covered are Rosa Parks, rise of Islam, Martin Luther King, and Black Panthers to name a few. It also has activities and games. It even gives ideas for field trips; in this case it was to the African American History Museum. • I chose this lesson plan mainly because of how detailed it was. It had a really nice flow as well, when it came to the order of topics. It also covered a lot of topics and to me, it seemed interesting. • The use of this lesson will help me with the planning of the unit. It breaks it down very well and provides rubrics and essay questions that I can use or change to the question to fit my needs.

In a classroom these topics can be very useful. The students will all start off by reading the children’s book first to get a sense of who was who in the Civil Rights movement. Then half of the class will read the biography of Martin Luther King and the other half will read the Biography of Malcolm X. Then they can come together and compare what they had to what the other part of the class had about the other. As a break and a little reward, the students will watch Mississippi Burning, to get a sense of who would go against a movement like the Civil Rights. Many students will be asking themselves why would anyone do that, and with the movie they get a sense of how people thought differently in other parts of the country. The Jena Six article will be for further reading for any of those students who want to see if there is still racism in today’s society. The Civil Rights Museum website is there for them to study from and get a quick answer to a question they might have. Finally, the web quest is going to be a culminating project, it gives the students the ability to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and how they would tell it. I put it at the end because without a good sense of what happened they couldn’t finish the web quest.

Objectives: • Studetns will be able to identify key figures in the Civil Rights Movement. (NCSS 3). • Students will generate a personal response to what they have learned and read through a web quest or fictional letter using historical facts. (R-8-16, R-8-16.1)

Dear Stephen, I think your text set is very interesting, it lends itself to a great unit on Civil Rights characters. The webquest is really great and I think it will really help students to be more interactive with their learning. I also like how you are going to be using the Jigsaw type activity where half of the class reads one biography and the other class reads the other biography. Although it may be difficult to teach two books to a class at the same time, it could be a great co-teaching method. I also think it is very important to use modern day articles as well as old news articles to show how racism is still present and compare/contrast it to how it used to be to show how productive the Civil Rights movement has been. The Civil Rights museum could be used as a great "online field trip" in case a class couldn't make it to an actual museum this would be a great thing to use. I think it would be awesome if you were to have the students write from the perspective of the person they read about in the first text, like the activity we read about for class. This would give students the chance to "walk in the characters shoes" and help them to better understand the character on a more personal level. It also needs research and much thought to produce this more story-like paper instead of a report for a change. Good Job! -Jess Smith