Righting Wrongs: The Power of We the People

Engage

Ask students turn to a partner and talk about what they know about the Constitution and the rights of Americans.

Show the teacher-made Animoto. http://animoto.com/play/1ET1vGv3ZM4R6dQ2fNjiOg?utm_source=project_complete_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=project_complete_email&utm_content=challenger

Randomly organize kids into small groups (3-4 per group)

Distribute sets of pictures shown in the video, keeping pictures from same subject together. If necessary, subdivide the child labor pictures. Also more than one group can analyze the same set of pictures.

Students use the National Archive’s tool for analyzing the photos for individual reflection and to guide their discussion. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/photo.html

Another possible tool can be found at… http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/guides.html See Analyzing Photographs and Prints.

Each group will make notes on a poster that will be displayed along with the photos for their classmates. Information on the poster should be organized into concentric boxes. See the diagram below for details.

Group posters are displayed and students participate in a gallery walk. The walk is silent. Kids are look at the posters, thinking about the similarities and differences (of content) across the posters.

They should return to their groups and discuss these questions. What jumped out at you or did you notice? What similarities did to see? What differences? What questions do you have or what do you wonder?

Pull from students’ comments and acknowledge that the pictures all represent events or circumstances from the past. Furthermore they represent times that Americans disagreed with ways they were being treated and thus worked to change people’s ways of thinking and ultimately laws to protect their rights.

Explore

Students will work with partners to research how Americans through history have influenced government to advocate for, protect and guarantee their rights.

Each pair will focus on one rights issue (slavery, suffrage, and civil rights/Jim Crow Era, integration) and in particular the actions of an individual American: Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Susan B Anthony, Helen Keller, and Jackie Robinson

While learning about these individuals, they will seek to answer these questions.

Whose rights/what rights was this person “fighting” for?

What actions did they take?

What difficulties did they face?

What was the outcome?

Students should go to pre-selected sites. See the resource links at the beginning of this plan for sites. Teachers can facilitate this by creating a portaportal (http://www.portaportal.com) with links for students or by creating a Glog poster (http://edu.glogster.com) for each research pair. See the following example:

http://nmccullen.edu.glogster.com/glog-8337/

Explain

Once students have finished their research, the whole class comes together. Student pairs should summarize their findings. A class chart should be created to record the collective responses. The chart should include these categories:

Also based on what they learned, students should discuss with a partner and then journal write about the following questions:

1.   What rights do Americans have?

2.   How can Americans convince the government to do a better job of protecting their rights?

Elaborate

Student pairs will each create a 30 second Animoto video (http://animoto.com) in which the images tell the story of the role that the American they researched played in protecting our rights as Americans. The text will add important details. Review the rubric with the students before they begin.

In order to find images that are in the public domain, students will use “site:.gov” in Google Image Search to search government websites. The teacher should verify that the photos chosen are in the public domain, not subject to copyright restrictions. See Nortels’ video tutorial for directions for saving copies of images from the Internet.

Since they will be making a 30 second Animoto, here are some guidelines for students:

1.   Use 4-7 pictures.

2.   Sequence them so they tell a story.

3.   Use text for each image – short titles or captions. Animoto allows 2 lines of text per text image: 22 characters for the first line, 30 for the second.

4.   Select your music from Animoto’s collection. Think about how the pace and tone of the music fits with your story. Preview selections to see how you like them.

Evaluate

A rubric will be used to evaluate the degree to which the presentation communicates the responses to the Explore questions.

Two possibilities are:

Digital Storytelling Rubric

http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/DigitalStorytelling/Rubric%20Assessment.htm

Digital Imaging Project Evaluation Rubric

http://edu.learnit-teachit.org/resources/Handouts/

Extend

Students can brainstorm current rights issues. The teacher may provide ideas, particularly if there are relevant (age appropriate) current events.

Students then choose some ways to express their concerns, using the historic examples as a guide. Some ideas include, a poster campaign, writing letters, starting a petition, etc.