Part 1

In the unit that I am teaching right now, students are reading historical fiction and nonfiction

novels that deal with WWII, civil rights, and refugees. With these readings, students are reading

informational texts to accompany each text that help build background knowledge and different

perspectives on the topics they are reading. Throughout this unit, students will build the understanding

of what human rights are, how they’ve been violated, how people stood up for their rights and found

ways to help others in need of those rights being taken away. In order to do this work, students will

look at the choices characters have made in their texts and how their surroundings affected those

choices. Students will then reflect on themselves and what they know about human rights around

them, what ways they see rights being affected in their community and in the world. This will then lead

us into our final unit of students taking a stand on something they believe in and creating a community

project to support their stance.

This unit is always interesting to me because it is mostly a student choice unit. My first year

teaching this unit, I taught only Social Studies. In the beginning of the year, I took a survey asking

students if they could study any time period, which would it be? This survey came back with 80 percent

saying they would like to study WWII, followed by around the same percentage each year. Therefore,

studying these time periods has been something we have done each year, with the essential question

changing a bit based on the interests of the students. I have always found that it is important to get

student interest when researching a topic because they have “buy in” into the information they are

gathering and synthesizing to obtain knowledge on the standards and strategies needed to be taught.

For this project, I will be doing a lesson on Human Rights. Students reflect and discuss what

they believe their human rights are and what rights they think all people should have. How these rights

have been hurt in the past and are being violated today. They will also discuss how they are being
protected. Originally, this lesson was just going to include the first article that explained what human

rights were using alongside practicing one of our reading strategies. Followed by a discussion about

what human rights were today and in the past and connecting it to the novels we are reading. This

lesson has evolved into adding in a clip about why Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations found it

important to create this declaration of Human Rights. Students will then reflect on the rights they see

included in the declaration and how it connects to rights they believe each person should have. The

social studies standard students will be focusing on is analyzing the relationships of different nations in

the Western Hemisphere, though they will be looking at the relationships of nations more in the whole

world in this lesson rather than just the Western Hemisphere.

The first text I have chosen for this lesson is, What are Human Rights?, by Encyclopaedia

Britannica. I chose this text because it gives a great explanation of what human rights are, where the

idea came from for all humans to have rights, how they have been harmed in the past and how our

government helps protect our rights. This article brings in connections from each of the novels students

are reading, giving students a correlation to why we are learning about human rights and the novels we

are reading. This text also introduces how the United Nations created the Declaration of Human Rights,

leading into the next text chosen for this lesson.

This text is a great text to build some background information for the students. For this text,

students will be using reading strategies taught to write a summary of text using a central idea and

supporting details, (CCSS RI.6.1). Having students write this summary will help them gain a better

understanding of the text they’ve read and will prepare them to discuss their own human rights. While

what they are learning is more of a Social Studies concept, they are using literacy strategies in order to

understand the text. Therefore, by having a good understanding of this text, they will be ready to use
the following text to gain more knowledge of human rights in a way that is not traditionally used in

class.

The following text for this lesson is Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Holocaust,

and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights This video shows how the United Nations adopted the

Declaration of Human Rights to restore human rights to people who were denied these rights. This text

gives background to how the UN and Eleanor Roosevelt felt the need for this declaration. While this

video gives background information about how this document came to be, it shows photographs and

videos from this time period. Giving glimpses of what she saw resulting from the Holocaust and the

experiences she had that pushed her to pull countries together come up with a document that would

protect these human rights. I think the video gives a great visual to historical events that a good portion

are reading about and how these events led to 18 countries coming together to come up with an

agreement of what rights all should have.

This text is being used so students can analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is

introduced, illustrated, and elaborated on in a text (CCSS: RI.6.2). Students will understand the role

Eleanor Roosevelt took in coming up with the Human Rights Declaration and what motivated her to do

so. This will also allow students to use the integration of knowledge and ideas to integrate information

presented in different media or formats (CCSS: RI 6.7). This video will connect with what the students

are reading in the book club. Students will begin to inquire about their own novels and how they relate

to this video as they begin to see how the UN was put in place to help protect people’s human rights

from this war. They will also connect with the fact that even though this was a declaration of what

people’s human rights are, it does not bind all countries to follow it, which is why some people are

having to flee their countries. While the students are watching the video, they will fill out two column
notes, this will be for students to take notes on what they are watching and note what’s going on in

their head. After this video is played, to get the students thinking about what they just watched,

students will do a silent discussion thread. This will give students time to quietly reflect on the

questions asked about the video, then discuss those reflections as a group, seeing the different

perspects each member of the group had. As they write this thread, I will push them to add on to the

thinking of the previous persons, add more to what they were saying or give a new idea, pushing them

to think more deeply about this clip.

The final text I have students reading is an infographic of this declaration. Students will be

reading this infographic because it breaks the information from the Declaration of Human Rights in a

way that is easy for students to understand. Alongside this declaration, students will see the

photograph of the original document and I will give them access to the full document that some can

look at as a reference after they analyze the infographic. As students analyze this infographic, they will

compare rights that they felt were important to them along with the rights that they see here. It will

also be used for students to relate what they know going on in the world and if they believe that all

these rights are being followed in other countries. Students will then discuss their thoughts on their

understanding of why these rights are not being followed everywhere. This text will be used to

synthesize information and to draw connections between what they have seen and thought, to what

this declaration includes. Students will use this to decide their three most important human rights and

defend why those are so important to them. This will help them start to come up with a stance and be

able to defend it.

Learning students will draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection

and research (CCSS: W.6.9). Students will do this by using this infographic to find evidence that the UN
declared a human right that all people deserved. They will reflect on what they thought an important

right was and how this declaration put it. They will look at these rights and their own to decide what

the most important three rights are that they believe everyone should have. This will lead them to

analyze the texts they are reading in their book club groups and see how these rights that they feel are

important are being denied in one way or another. To wrap up this lesson, I am using an exit slip that

will ask students to show their learning from this lesson. It will allow me to see what the students are

walking away with and what future lessons students need in order to be successful. I will also use what

they said to start off our book club discussions in small groups and have students discuss together the

connections they saw from this lesson to what they are reading in their specific novels.

This lesson integrates both social studies and language arts into one lesson. Even though I am

just teaching language arts, there are so many social studies content topics that can be integrated into

their learning as well. It is important that students are not only reading to gain practice to become a

better reader, but to do it in a way that will build their understanding of the world around them. That

when they are reading, they are reading for inquiry and specifically for this unit, reading like a historian

and researcher.

Part 2
Unit:
Essential Question:
What are human rights? How were/are they being supported or denied? Based on the time period of
your novel.
Purpose:
The purpose of this unit is for students to see how human rights have been denied and what people
have done to stand up for their rights. This will push students to then think about how they can stand
up for something they believe in.
Summative Assessment:
Students will write a final paper about the theme of their novel. Explaining what the author wanted
you to learn. Students will discuss how the theme of the novel goes back to human rights. (this will be
published and conferenced with)
Students will also write a comparing and contrasting essay about their novel to another peer’s novel
and how those time periods human rights/social and political structures. (This will be a timed essay)
Formative assessments:
Formative assessments will be taken on discussion days and will be check ins on how students are
mastering the different standards bit by bit.

6th Grade ELA/Social Studies

Standards:
● Analyze organization and structure of informational text to make meaning
○ Use Key ideas and details to:
■ Cite evidence to support analysis of text
■ Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular
details;
■ Provide a summary of the text
■ Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated,
and elaborated on in a text.
○ Use Integration of Knowledge and Ideas to:
■ Integrate information presented in different media or formats (6.7)
■ Compare and contrast on author’s presentation of events with that of another

● Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and
research. (CCSS: W.6.9)
○ Apply grade 6 Reading standards to literature (for example: “Compare and contrast texts
in different forms or genres [for example: stories and poems; historical novels and
fantasy stories] in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics”). (CCSS:
W.6.9a)
○ Apply grade 6 Reading standards to literary nonfiction (for example: “Trace and evaluate
the argument and specific claims in a text, distinguishing claims that are supported by
reasons and evidence from claims that are not”). (CCSS: W.6.9b)

Social Studies

1. Analyze the relationships of different nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Students Can:
 1. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of living in an interconnected world.
2. Examine changes and connections in ideas about citizenship in different times and places in the
Western Hemisphere.
3. Describe how groups and individuals influence governments within the Western Hemisphere.
4. Explain how political ideas and significant people have interacted, are interconnected, and have
influenced nations.
5. Analyze political issues from national and global perspectives over time.
6. Identify historical examples illustrating how people from diverse backgrounds in the Western
Hemisphere perceived and reacted to various global issues.

Learning Targets:
● I can analyze how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced in a text or history and how
relationships of different nations are built.
● I can draw evidence from informational texts in different formats to support my analyzations
and reflections and research.
Previous lesson:
● Read What are Human Rights?
○ While students read, they will identify the facts in order to find the central idea.
○ After students read, they will write a summary on what the central idea and key facts of
the text were. Students will come prepared to class with this summary.

Lesson:
Introduction:
(10 min)
● What are human rights? What rights do you think belong to everyone?
● Use what you’ve read in the article, What are Human Rights?, and your own thoughts about
human rights, jot down what rights you believe are the rights you should always have. What
rights are important to you at school, in your home, and in your community? You is a right that
you feel that you have, but not truly?
● Turn and discuss these rights with your neighbor.
● Share out what some of these rights are
● Why are these rights so important to us?
● Does everyone share these rights?
● Who protects these rights?

Middle:
(25 min)
● Now we are going to look at an important person and group who thought these rights should be
protected and what they did in order
 ● Introduce Eleanor Roosevelt, who she was and why she created The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
● Explain what the UN is.
● Watch the video that gives information about her purpose for the declaration.
● While students watch the video, they will take notes using a chart that has two columns. Left
column, what they see, right column, what connections or thoughts they have.
● Once the video is over, students will have a couple of minutes to jot down the rest of their
ideas.
After Video:
● Students then will have a discussion on this film with silent discussion thread. They will answer
the following three questions:
■ Why was there a need for this document? What inspired this document?
■ Why was the declaration important?
● Show what is right for all to have
● So that the Holocaust would not happen again.
■ What was the purpose of this document?
● what we all share
● not live by fear of peoples difference

Wrap Up:
Partner work:
(15 min)
● Now let's look at the infographic and see how it compares to what the rights you felt were
important.
○ Show students actual declaration, but explain why we are using the infographic
● Discuss the rights that were written there,
○ do they match with the rights that you felt were important? (board)
○ Are those rights the rights that you see around the world? (board)
○ Do you know of rights not being identified somewhere else? (board)
Is the declaration being followed everywhere around the world? (board)
○ What are the three most important human rights that everyone deserves to have?
(board)
Class discussion:
(10 min)
● What are your thoughts about other people around the world not receiving these
rights?
● What do you think should be done, or should anything be done?
● What should our country or other countries do? Should they do anything?
Exit Ticket
(5 min)
● Students will answer the following questions on their exit slip and the end of class.
1. Who is responsible for protecting people’s rights? Why?
2. What are the citizen’s jobs to make sure these rights are protected? What are the
government’s jobs to make sure these rights are protected? Why?
3. Who should be included in a country’s obligation to provide these human rights? Anyone
a given time? Citizens of the country? Why?
4. Reflect, how these rights connect to the novels you’re reading? Whether it's about the
Holocaust and why it was the reason for this document to come about, about the civil
rights, which Americans didn’t have until after the document was created or whether it’s
how people are fleeing to a new country because their human rights aren’t being
protected today.

Resources:
What are Human Rights? Article

Fundamental Freedoms: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Holocaust, and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights

Full Declaration of Human Rights

Picture of the Declaration of Human Rights

 Rubric for Marleigha’s Lesson Plan Project

Limited Proficiency Some Proficiency Proficiency High Proficiency

Organizationally Organization is Organization is Organization is Organization is fully

(6 points) missing partially visible adequately visible visible

Mechanically Mechanics are Mechanics are Mechanics are Mechanics are fully
(6 points) missing partially used adequately used used

Logically Logic is missing Logic is partially Logic is adequately Logic is fully

(6 points) evident evident evident

Substance is Substance is Substance is Substance is

Substantively
missing partially rigorous adequately rigorous intellectual and
(7 points)
and interesting and interesting creative

25/25 points - TOTAL

Project 2 Evaluation

Marleigha -
Your Lesson Plan Project on Human Rights is top-notch. It represents thoughtful work. You integrated readings,
viewings, experiences, and data into the project’s design. Your lesson plan meets all the requirements. It's
smart. It’s imaginative. And the mechanics are strong. Overall, the quality meets the Proficiency or High
Proficiency ratings for each criteria in the rubric.