Multicultural Lesson Plan

Standards

Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.6.1

English Language Arts Standard: Speaking and Listening, Grade 6

Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and

teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 6 topics, texts, and issues, building on
others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. (Common Core)

Multicultural Education Goal

Provide authentic materials, activities, and experiences to understand diversity.

Students Will Be Able To (SWBAT)

Probe and reflect on ideas under discussion.

Students will be working towards the fourth and fifth levels of Blooms Taxonomy:
Analysis and Synthesis. Students will be relating and dramatizing topics from assigned
reading. Students will be interpreting and categorizing the motivations and actions of
individuals from nonfiction literature.

Learning Style

Auditory, visual, and kinesthetic

Multiple Intelligence Focus

Interpersonal--Social Intelligence

Through reading, playacting, and creation of diagrams, students will reflect upon and
demonstrate an understanding of multiple perspectives.

Materials

Assigned reading: Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston;

Digital whiteboard;
Handouts with five columns marked: Emotions and Thoughts (the largest column
with room for student notes and comments), Internees, Army Patrol/Members of
 the Public, You (narrow columns with room for checkmarks). Instructor will need
enough handouts for all students.

Instruction--Learning Process

Launching the Lesson

Preparation: rearrange the classroom with the desks out of the way against the
walls and the seating in five areas with chairs grouped facing inwards for
discussions and interactions. If possible, keep an area in the center clear for
group presentations later in the lesson.
Have students put away all materials except their copies of Farewell to
Manzanar.
Have students line up in the spaces between the seating areas. Starting with a
first student and moving one-by-one down the lines, students will announce a
number one, two, three, four, or five.
As students announce their number they will move to the designated areas within
the classroom numbered for each group.
Instructor will project the names of the ten WWII era Japanese internment camps
on the electronic whiteboard: Topaz, Colorado River, Gila River, Granada, Heart
Mountain, Jerome, Manzanar, Minidoka, Rohwer, and Tule Lake.
Instructor will read A Chronology (kindle location 69-84) from Farewell to
Manzanar. Students should follow along in the book. (No additional explanations
are necessary Reading this selection efficiently but with emphasis and emotion
will demonstrate to the students how they will be reading their own passages
later in the lesson.)

(note: Students tend to self-segregate; they tend to break themselves into

homogeneous comfort zones. By imposing a more random grouping, student comfort
zones will be broken up and more diverse groupings will result.)

Concepts, Information, Skills, Readings

Part One

Instructor will ask each group have a brief discussion and then to adopt for itself
the name of one of the internment camps. Instructor will address each group by
its adopted name for the duration of the lesson.
Instructor will assign each of the five groups a short passage from Farewell to
Manzanar. Suggested passages:
 Chapter 2, Shikata Ga Nai [It Must Be Done], pp. 19-20, from We had just
pulled up to ...which my brothers stuffed with straw.
Chapter 4, A Common Master Plan, p. 29, from The simple truth to
...almost nothing worked.
Chapter 4, A Common Master Plan, pp. 30-31, from That first morning
to ...sitting down in public, among strangers.
Chapter 5 Almost a Family, pp. 35-37, from Now in the mess halls to
...the vacuum his passing had left in our lives.
Chapter 10, The Reservoir Shack: An Aside, pp. 78-80, Entire chapter.
Ask the students to imagine they have been relocated into internment camps.
They should try to imagine themselves in the places of the people that they will
be reading about.
Groups will be asked to familiarize themselves with their passage by reading
through it. Students will be asked to take turns, each quietly reading aloud two
lines of their passage.
Instructor will actively walk around the groups, keeping students on task and
monitoring progress.

Part Two

Inform each group they will be presenting their passages as if it was a play and
they are the performers.
Instruct each group to assign itself the parts of the people described in the
passages. One, two, or more narrators is permissible. Not all students need to
have a speaking part but all students must participate.
Give students a few minutes to plan. Each student can lightly underline their
individual parts in the book or electronic book.

Break Time

The students have been concentrating for a long time by this point. If there is a
natural break in instruction (lunch or recess) take it. If there is no natural break,
make one. The students are going to need about 5 to 10 minutes to be
rambunctious and get out some energy. Play some music. Let them move
around the room. Let them be a little bit rowdy. Let them act like kids without
getting out of hand. A good rule of thumb is they can do whatever they want as
long as it doesnt make anybody mad (especially the students and teachers in
the next room).
 Make sure that you give the students a one minute warning that study time is
about to resume. They need a little bit of a warning that it will soon be time to
transition back to being serious students.
At the end of break time have the students reform into their groups.

(note: Break time does not count against the 90 minute lesson plan time.)

Part Three

(note: The group that has been assigned chapter 10 has a unique passage. Their
passage describes a tense interaction between an army patrol and a group of Japanese
internees. What makes it unique is it describes many of the actions of the young army
guards whereas most of the rest of the narrative describes only the experience of the
Japanese. Through this passage, one can understand the feelings of both the young
army guards and the internees. This chapter will give the class the clearest idea of the
divisions the nation was feeling at the time. The strong emotions the army soldiers are
displaying when they confront the Japanese work crew mirrors the way overall society
was vilifying its Japanese citizens and resident aliens.)

Starting with the chapter 10 group, each group will present its interpretation of
the material by playacting in the cleared out center of the classroom.
After the chapter 10 group has given its presentation, distribute the handouts.
Have each student write down in the column on their paper labeled Emotions and
Thoughts what they think the Japanese internees, the young soldiers, or they
themselves were feeling or thinking. Have them check under the corresponding
columns who would have those feelings or thoughts--they can check one or more
boxes if they think the different groups would share the same feelings and/or
thoughts. Emotions and thoughts can be described in one word or in sentences,
but if only one word is given student must list several emotions and thoughts.
Minimum one emotion and/or thought per chapter.
Repeat this process until all groups have gone.

Break Time

Same as the previous break time.

Part Four

Using the digital whiteboard, instructor will draw a Venn diagram divided into
three overlapping areas. The diagram will be labeled Emotions and Thoughts.
 The three areas of the diagram will be labeled Japanese Internees, Members of
the Public, and You.
Students will be asked to individually read off their feelings and thoughts from
their completed handouts. Instructor will fill in the student responses in the
appropriate area of the Venn diagram.
All students must participate!
Using the responses the students have given as a starting place, instructor will
moderate a discussion about empathy for the Japanese internees. Instructor will
allow students plenty of latitude to speak their minds.
All students must participate!

Assessments

The standard of this lesson was for students to Engage effectively in a range of
collaborative discussions. To successfully complete this lesson, students need
to actively engage with diverse partners by participating in one-on-one, group,
and teacher-led activities. Additionally, students need to express their own ideas
clearly and to build on the ideas of others.
Assessing success is done through noting student participation.

Analysis: Relate and Dramatize

To receive a positive assessment in this area student must have participated in

the reading and playacting interpretation of their groups assigned chapter.

Synthesis: Interpret and Categorize

To receive a positive assessment in this area student must have contributed in

the creation of the Emotions and Thoughts diagram.

Multicultural Teaching Objective

To receive a positive assessment in this area student must have participated in

the discussion at the end of the lesson.
Resources

See attached handout and Venn diagram

About World War II Japanese-American Internment Camp Documents. (n.d.).

Ancestry.com. Retrieved March 3, 2017 website:
http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1134
Blooms Taxonomy Action Verbs. (n.d). Fresno State.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2017
from Fresno State website:
http://www.fresnostate.edu/academics/oie/documents/assesments/Blooms%20L
evel.pdf
The Components of MI. (n.d.). MI Oasis. Retrieved March 3, 2017 from
MulitpleIntelegencesOasis.org website:
http://multipleintelligencesoasis.org/about/the-components-of-mi/#box-7
English Language Arts Standards: Speaking and Listening, Grade 6. (n.d.). Common
Core. Retrieved from CoreStandards.org on April 20, 2017 website:
http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/SL/6/)
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki, Houston, James D. 1973. Farewell to Manzanar. New
York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Reflection

The lesson plan is original.

The lesson plan contains detail and explanation that an administrator can use for
effective evaluation
Learning styles of audio, visual, and kinesthetic are utilized. Interpersonal or
Social Intelligence from Gardners Multiple Intelligences is addressed.
Skills and information identified in the lesson objectives are effectively and
actively taught.
The Multicultural Educational Goal is clearly and actively taught within the lesson.
Teaching effectiveness for both the subject and multicultural content is assessed.