When I meet our new students next term, I plan to use the first four lessons from facinghistory.org that I found in Common Sense Media:Social Justice and Equity-Focused Resources for Classrooms. I want the students to tell their story of who they are and how they identify with the various groups while keeping the focus on equity. Because we have had so many issues in 4th grade, I plan on collaborating with the other 4th grade teachers as to the timing and the roll out of these materials. I think that making a grade level lesson plan will make it easier for our students and staff during recess, lunch and during after-school programs. I like the way we can use art (self-portrait) with a picture of each student inset, combined with their identity map to post on the wall. I can take a picture of this to post on FlipGrid so that during times of asynchronous learning we can still see our class as a community. This will also bring up how words that identify us matter. After reading H.L. Gates "Black in Latin America", I will be sensitive to the words students use to identify themselves. It will also be good to be able to speak to the history of Mexico and Spain when addressing the idea of identity. I think it will be good to circulate our students in 4th grade so that they get to meet and speak to each other while visiting one another's classrooms. Hopefully, this will help create a 4th grade community.
I will use the resources available in Bullying and Cyberbullying Prevention: Strategies and Resources from The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to talk about when things go wrong. Students need to be taught how to handle the times that they bully or are bullied, either on the playground, in class or online. I plan to push out the resources to parents that are part of the ADL website and talk about them at back to school night about how they can support this curriculum at home. It is wonderful that they are available in English and Spanish.
In the video Refranz says we need to include the students that are NOT in the classroom as well. I like this as we can identify who is not in our classroom, and use that to educate ourselves about all the possible identities that we may come in contact with. Having conversations about other religions, races, etc. will help us develop empathy. I plan on connecting my class with a class on Empatico.org. This will give us a connection to a much larger world community.
This preps the class for SEL lessons from our Second Step Curriculum and Our Digital Citizenship classes from CommonSenseMedia.org. While I will use many of the lessons in CommonSenseMedia.org I like that I can pepper the curriculum with resources I find in the other websites. For example, because finding evidence is a standard that is critical in all subjects, I will use Stanford COR resources to practice lateral reading (love this!). I can also use the resources from Edutopia and KQED Mindshift to prepare the students for asynchronous learning that we all need to be prepared for.