We are All Different, That is What Makes Us the Same.

Finding the Power of Equality Through the Civil War

Age Target: 4th grade
This unit is centered on The Liberation of Gabriel King, which teaches
the students about the power of equality and liberation. The ethical
goal of this lesson is to teach the students to accept others for who
they are culturally, socially, spiritually, etc. The happenings in the book
will show the students how far equality and acceptance has come since
the 1960s and how important it is to continue this integrated outlook
to make the world a more peaceful place to live. The students will also
learn different language arts skills while reading this book, such as
figurative language usage, discussion, the process of comparing and
contrasting, the importance of character development, the skill of
making inferences, the skill of finding themes and main ideas, the
importance of making connections, and the essentials of summarizing
as well as finding the conflicts within the story. Many of these ideas
will be new to the students; however, they will have some background
knowledge with comparing and contrasting, recognizing figurative
language, making inferences, and finding the main ideas within a text.
Although this background knowledge is not essential for the lesson, it
will help the students pull together the information and learn the
lessons better. The students need to have some background
information on why the civil war happened and what people were
fighting for in order to begin reading the book. This knowledge will help
them better relate to the characters as well as the setting and the plot
of the story. The students will be able to take the information that they
learn within these lessons to broaden their knowledge on the civil
rights movement, as well as specific activists during the time period
and what they believed in. The information learned about the civil
rights movement will help the students better understand what
happened within U.S. history and connect it to the happenings in
Indiana History. The students will also be able to take the language
objectives and translate these teaching into their own writing and
reading to help with the fluency, comprehension, as well as vocabulary
as they progress to other lessons for the rest of the year.