Year of Writing:

Week(s) in School Writing Activities:

Year:

1 (End of August to “Above The Line” activity and “This I believe” one-page essay.
Beginning of (Class Norms Creation/getting to know each other Unit):
September). Week one unit questions:
1. Can we collaborate effectively to reach an understanding of
what reasonable, safe classroom norms are? (To quote Tammi
Wolff, “We are here to be safe, and to learn. And we can’t
learn if we aren’t safe”).
2. Can I show an understanding of how where I come from affects
who I am, and how I currently think?

This I Believe essay due at end of unit.

Standard: GLE 3-8-1: Stylistic devices and descriptive details in

literary and narrative texts are organized for a variety of audiences and
purposes and evaluated for quality.

2-5 (September) . False advertising/fake news understanding and creation unit:

Unit Questions:
1) Can I spot the ways that advertising affects my life, and
manipulates my perspectives?
2) Can I research effectively, not in a biased way to inform my
own current perspectives, but in a way that helps me inform myself
with objective evidence?
3) Once I have received a strong piece of evidence, can I fit it into
my overall understanding?

Group work: Fake News/Ad Website due at end of unit.

Standard: GLE 1-8-1: 1. Communication skills and interviewing

techniques are required to gather information and to develop and
deliver oral presentations.

6-10 (October and Immigration and Cultural Acceptance Unit:

first week of 1. What opportunities have I been given/not given, because of
November). where I was born/grew/up/moved to?
2. How can I be a good “global citizen” as cultures continue to
merge?

Personal Lineage Story Project/Poster due.

 Standard: GLE 3-8-2-a-ii: Write and justify a personal interpretation of
literary or informational text that includes a thesis, supporting details
from the literature, and a conclusion.

11-16 (November- American Mythology Unit:

December, to end of Unit Questions:
semester). 1. Is there such a thing as a self-made man? Where do morals fit
in, does it matter what you did to become “self-made?”
2. What does it mean to be an American? (specifically, how have
“American” stories fed into who I am today)?
3. What counts as a “myth?” What counts as an “American
myth”?
4. Who are our heroes and why?

Semester Final:
“The myth of the self-made human in my family” project.

Standard: GLE 3-8-2-a-i: Students can: Write arguments to support

claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. (CCSS: W.8.1) i.
Develop texts that offer a comparison, show cause and effect, or
support a point

19-22 (January- Responsible Use of Social Media Unit:

February). 1. How can we use social media responsibly, and not use it as a
shield?
2. Is it cowardly to use social media anonymously?

Social Media Collaboration Project Due at end of unit.

Standard: GLE 3-8-3-f: Use technology, including the Internet, to

produce and publish writing and present the relationships between
information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate
with others.

23-30 (February, Holocaust Unit:

March, and a little bit Unit Questions:
of April). 1. How can understanding the Holocaust and what went on make
me a better global citizen?
2. How does a high level of literacy make me a better global
citizen?
3. How can understanding the Holocaust help me understand the
world, human nature, and myself better?

Letters to the Dead due at end of unit.

 Standard: GLE 3-8-1-a: Write narratives to develop real or imagined
experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive
details, and well-structured event sequences.

31-35 (April-May). Activism Unit:

Unit Questions:
1. Do we have a responsibility to protest? Is it “American” to
protest?
2. If it is “American” to protest, are all protests valid? Do all
protests deserve to be heard equally?

Activism Hero Activity:

Mr. Nichols’s chosen hero was Muhammad Ali. Who is someone you
think embodied the spirit of activism?

Final:
Persuasive Writing Project due.

Standard: GLE 3-8-3: Editing writing for grammar, usage, mechanics,

and clarity is an essential trait of a well-written document.

36 (One week of “This I Believe” essay (as a measure of student growth as one of the
May). last activities we do).

Standard: GLE 3-8-1-a-v: Establish and maintain a controlling idea

appropriate to audience and purpose

Activities (In order they appear in chart):

Above the Line: This is a collaborative activity for mapping behavioral expectations from
day one. Students are given a giant post-it note, with a line drawn halfway through it. As a class,
they collaborate on what behaviors they deem to be “above” and “below” the behavior line. This
gives students agency in creating their own expectations as a class. This paper is then displayed,
and when students are behaving in ways that do not align to their own standards, attention is
called to the standards which they themselves created.

This I Believe: This is a very flexible, unscripted essay that can take whatever form a
student desires, as long as it is one page long and reflects the core values of the student. This
activity serves to help the teacher get to know the student on a more personal level, and provides
a baseline for understanding a students previous ideas, and how they change over the course of
the semester. This will be one of the first activities we do in my class, and one of the last. This
will show student growth at the beginning and end of the semester. When presented at the
beginning, students will be encouraged to showcase what led to their beliefs (place of birth,
culture, place grown up, etc).
 False Advertising/Fake News Creation: Students will create this as part of a larger unit,
having to do with understanding modern propaganda and the effects it has on our lives as global
citizens. After being exposed to examples of advertising, news, etc with a clear bias, that is
uninformed, students will use the concepts at play in the examples to create their own examples.
After basic training with a free website platform (Weebly, Wix, etc) students will be asked to
collaborate to create a webpage with a biased, uninformed piece of fake news, or an
advertisement designed to manipulate someone into buying a fictional product. The more
humorous, the better. Preston is a 1-to-1 school, so this is an achievable activity. The caveat of
this assignment is that the website/advertisement is not allowed to be politically partisan.
Media Unit Quote:
“Articles and books have been made ever shorter (or substituted altogether for videos) in
order to appeal to those who are confused by anything over 500 words. News and debates are
often conducted in soundbites and conveyed in 140-character tweets. Many people shake their
heads at these trends, and act as if they’ve been brought about by shadowy forces and greedy
media corporations. “Those people” over “there” are to blame. It’s true that media companies do
want to make money. But they’re only able to do so by fulfilling what the consumer demands. If
the consumer wants short, dumbed-down content, that’s what is produced. Websites wouldn’t
create clickbait headlines if they weren’t effective in soliciting clicks. The reality is that it isn’t
corporations who are responsible for our media, but the public. You, me, and everyone else.”
-Art of Manliness.

Dollar Street: To imbue cultural acceptance and start this unit off right, students will be
led to explore Dollar Street, a website put together by Gapminder. Hans Rosling mentioned this
website in his book Factfulness, (a book that we will be reading excerpts from) as a way of
driving home the point that extreme poverty looks different in every place, and that not all the
world is experiencing it. This website lets students see that everything exists on a continuum, and
that not all poverty is extreme, and that not everything outside the U.S. is poverty.

My Personal Lineage Poster/Project Assignment: Students will be asked to interview

someone in their family about their personal history. This project is designed to get students
thinking about how diasporic American culture is, and how we all have a varied history that
makes us the interesting melting pot that we are. Students will be asked to create a poster of the
interview, with pictures representing the cultures they come from. These posters will be
displayed in the classroom to illustrate the diversity present within our own room.

The Myth of The Self-Made Human In My Family Project: Having gone over the myth
of the self-made man (modern definition, see “human”), students will be assigned to
write/paint/draw/create a graphic novel tracing the myth of the self-made human throughout the
life of someone in their own family. Traditionally, this myth starts with someone doing a manual
labor job, then ends with them as a huge success in some arena. Students will be asked to
examine how true this is, how many of their relatives’ lives followed this path, and how this
myth leaves people disappointed if they don’t live up to a certain standard. The personal lineage
assignment lays the groundwork for this. Students will be asked to interview a different member
of their family than the one they interviewed for the lineage project. Using their knowledge of
the self-made legend, students will trace this myth through the lives of someone they know/are
related to. Did this person’s life follow the same pattern? Is this person on their own personal
hero's journey? Were they helped along the way? Or hindered? Can anyone truly be “self-
made?”

Personal Activism Hero: Students will be asked to choose someone that they feel
embodies the spirit of activism. They will write/make a presentation/draw something about that
hero, based on their life, the things they fought against, etc. Students will be asked why they
chose this person.
Personal Activism Quote:
“If you breathe, people will have an opinion on how you drew that breath. Be true to
yourself.”
-Muhammad Ali

Social Media Collaboration Project: Students will be asked to use social media for good,
or to demonstrate understanding of a previous text, etc. This is a very flexible assignment, in
pairs, students will use social media to accomplish this goal. Ideas include: Using Instagram to
show the daily life of a character in a book, snapchat book filters, Youtube channels to talk about
class texts, etc.

Persuasive Writing Activity: One of the biggest day-to-day reminders/focuses that we are
going to drive home in this class is that a high level of literacy is the “language of power.” If one
wants to gain power in this life, if they want to be listened to, they have to be able to
communicate at a high level. This activity is the final project. Students are to pick an issue they
are passionate about, write a letter to someone with the power to affect change in that arena, and
then send them the letter through some sort of electronic medium (they can also send a physical
letter if they want to). This is an introduction to modern activism.

Letters to The Dead: This final activity in our Holocaust unit is very heavy. We will be
supplementing the texts in the Holocaust unit with letters written by people who never made it,
and the students will be asked to respond. They can choose from a range of texts, poems, essays,
letters, etc that we have read during the Holocaust unit, but they are assigned to write back. What
would they say if they could look their chosen person in the eye in today’s world? What would
this person need to hear? We will be doing an origami-type activity once the students have
written these letters, and then hanging all of the letters from the ceiling of the classroom. They
will hang there for the entirety of the Activism unit.

Gallagher, Kelly, and Penny Kittle. 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to
Engage and Empower Adolescents. Heinemann, 2018.

Emdin, Christopher. For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of
Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education. Random House Inc, 2017.