Aim:
This
lesson builds off of Trudy Kane’s
lesson (M&M Game) and an adapted version of Lisa
North’s lesson (Letter Writing Campaign). This
particular lesson is grounded in the New York City Kindergarten
Curriculum.
Aims:
-
Students will discuss: What does it mean to be “fair?”
What can we do to work toward fairness? (How can we advocate
for ourselves?)
- Students
will use the Writing Workshop method of letter writing
to express their “message” about fairness
(we write letters because we want to tell someone something.
Letters have a message).
Materials:
Letter writing paper
Connection:
“Students we have been discussing what it means to
be ‘fair.’ During Math we looked at ‘more’
and ‘less’ with M&M’s and how we might
‘add’ or give more M&M’s to the students
who had less. Many of you thought it was not fair that some
children got more, and you thought of what would be “fair”
to do. We also looked at people like Martin Luther King,
Jr., and Rosa Parks, who saw unfairness in the world, and
worked to help change it. Yesterday, we made a list of things
we felt were unfair in our homes, classroom, and/or school.
Today we will look at one way we can work toward change,
or making a situation more ‘fair.’
We have
been learning how to write letters. We learned that we write
letters because we want to tell someone something. Today
I am going to teach you we can write letters to tell people
about an unfair situation in our lives, and how we might
make the situation more ‘fair.’ ”
Model:
“Yesterday, we wrote on our list that it
is unfair when only some classes get to go outside to play
at lunchtime. Some classes get to go outside more often
than others. So today, I’m going to write a letter
to our principal to ask if all classes can have playtime
equally.”
Model
thinking out loud about how to write the letter by drawing
on half the paper a picture of our class with “sad”
faces looking at the other kids playing, and the other half
of the picture of our class with “smiles” playing
outside with another class. Model thinking out loud about
what to write, then writing the words.
Active
Engagement: “Now, using the list we made
yesterday turn and tell your partner who you are going to
write, and what your “message” is.” (What
is unfair, and what we could do to make a situation fairer.)
Practice:
Students draw their pictures and write their words
in their letters. Circulate and conference with students
discussing topic choice and their message, how to make the
pictures show the message, and how to write the words.
Share: Read a letter of a student who demonstrated the aims
of the lesson and discuss how their letter met those aims.
Extension(s):
-
Over the next few days, students continue to write letters
to advocate for fairness, working on making their messages
clear and constructive.
-
Continue discussing what is fair and not fair in the context
of the children’s lives, using examples as they
naturally occur in the school setting. Also, discuss other
ways of advocating for fairness.
- Have
children research fairness using a “Fairness
Web Quest.”
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Subject
Areas:
Language Arts
Grade Levels: K-2
About
the teacher:
Nicole
Nadeau is a native of the Adirondack Region in
Upstate New York, she first became interested in the field
of English as a Second Language while teaching for a semester
at the Leo Tolstoy Pedagogical University in Tula, Russia.
This life changing experience and her love for her students
steered her away from my intended path of pursuing a PhD
in Russian History, and into teaching English as Second
Language. I moved to New York City in the fall of 1998 to
attend Teachers College, Columbia University where I completed
my Masters in TESOL in the spring of 2000. She is currently
starting her fifth year teaching in NYC at P.S. 361 in Brooklyn.
niconade7@aol.com
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