ItAG Unit Plan Summaries

Resident: Laura
Title of Unit: Exploring Rights and Institutions through Documentary Television Series
Current grade level: 11th
Curriculum Area: English Language Arts
Time frame: 30 days or six weeks
Description: Students will use two documentary television series (Making a Murderer and The
Kalief Browder Story) to examine the intersections of race, class and education in our society.
Both assumptions and biases will be examined in relation to these various themes. Students
will explore this topic by addressing the following Essential Questions,
1. Who determines what is right? The public? An individual in a position of authority?
The government? Explain.
2. How does your family shape your personal identity? How does your community shape
your personal identity?
3. Who is responsible for protecting your rights? You as an individual? The court? The
school?
4. Is it possible to change other peoples opinions of you once theyve already established
beliefs about who you are and what you represent?
5. What role does media play in swaying public opinions and determining who is right
and wrong? How does social media add to those shifting opinions?
6. Can education serve as a means for preventing crime? Does the education level of an
individual relate to their potential to commit crime?
7. Is justice relative? Does fairness change based on race, religion, age, gender, class etc?

Resident: Martha
Title of Unit: What does it mean to be American?
Current grade level: 7th (Unit may be adapted for grades 7-12)
Curriculum Area: English Language Arts
Time frame: 30 days or six weeks
Description: The United States of America is not only a nation, its a concept. Students are
invited to journey through the literature of men and women who identify as American and
explore how the meaning of American changes through time. The task is difficult,
challenging, and complex. Students are asked to remain open to various interpretations, and to
interact with the variety of text - written, audio, and video - through their interpersonal
experiences. In order to ensure depth of discussion and discourse students will ask and are
expected to engage in a deep level of inquiry about the following questions:
1. What makes someone American? Why are some Americans privileged and others
not?
2. Should undocumented people be considered American?
3. Using a variety of texts students will examine these essential ideas through the
following questions:
4. Are songs poems, or are poems songs? Whats your stance?
5. Can life be fully described using poetry?
 6. How does the voice of the writer add or change the meaning of a text?
7. Are metaphors necessary to explain or communicate about life?
8. How do master writers create voice and make meaning through their texts?

Resident: Sylvia
Title of Unit: Community
Current Grade Level: First Grade
Curriculum Area: Social Studies
Time Frame: 3 weeks
Central Focus: Viewing community as more than a geographic space but also as a cultural
space
Description: In this learning unit, students will learn what makes up a community in order to
examine our own community. To expand on our community observations, students will
critically think about what changes can better our community and how people can be good
citizens in a community.
Students will:
1. Define community and illustrate the concept of a community (S, R, U)
2. Design a map of their own community and compare it to the map that is presented in
the curriculum (Scope and Sequence)
3. Name people within a community and describe their roles in the community
(community leaders, community helpers)
4. Describe their own community, the people they see, and how those people help the
community
5. Create a chart as a class of actions they can do that can positively contribute to the
community

Resident: Rebecca
Title of Unit: Nelson Mandela as Hero to South Africa & the World
Current grade level: 9-11th
Curriculum Area: Social Studies, English Language Arts & English as a New Language
Time Frame: Three Weeks
Description: This lesson is designed to help Entering and Emerging English Language
Learners develop both pragmatic and academic language skills that they will need to be
successful in a Global History class. Students will use geographic and historical reasoning to
develop a context for understanding apartheid in South Africa, the life of Nelson Mandela and
the post-apartheid period. A brief biography of Nelson Mandela and a fictionalized account of
the 1994 election in South Africa, The Day Gogo Went to Vote by Elinor Batezat Sisulu
(Author) and Sharon Wilson (illustrator), are the anchor texts for the unit. The unit asks
students to make inferences about how the actions of Nelson Mandela impacted the lives of
blacks in South Africa and to gather evidence to explain why Nelson Mandela is a hero.
Students will complete two major performance tasks: a script inspired by an illustration from
The Day Gogo Went to Vote as well as a paragraph that cites evidence to support the claim
that Nelson Mandela is a hero. These performance tasks are designed to assess students
knowledge of pragmatics as well as the basic conventions of citing evidence in argumentative
writing. The unit will explore the following essential questions:
1. What does it mean to be opressed?
2. What does it mean to be free?
3. Can everyone be free at the same time?
4. How can a leader impact history?
5. How does historical context impact our daily lives?
6. Why do some people talk differently from others?
7. How does context impact speech?