UNIT DESCRIPTION: DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES WITH COORALATING COMMON CORE
STATE STANDARDS
OVERARCHING ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:
1. What would make our present and future society "perfect"?
2. What will the future be like if we do not change the present?
3. How can we change the future for the better?
WEEK 1: UNDERSTANDING UTOPIA VS. DYSTOPIA
Students will begin the unit by investigating the difference between utopian and dystopian societies. They will think about what makes a society perfect, and on the flip side, what makes society flawed.
In reading The Giver, students will look for indicators to whether Jonas's society is utopian or dystopian. Students will begin making a continued T-chart of the characteristics they see of either type of society in the novel, citing specific quotations from the text to support their claims.
Students will begin to write two argumentative essays. In the first, they will take a stance on whether the society in The Giver is utopian or dystopian. In the second, they will take a stance on whether our own society closer resembles a utopia or a dystopia.
WEEK 2: ANALYZING THE FLAWS IN OUR SOCIETY
After reading farther into The Giver, students will compile a list of issues that Jonas's society lacks that our own society deals with such as
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Poverty
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Hunger
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Unemployment
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Racism & Discrimination
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Homelessness
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Sickness
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Abuse &/or Violence
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Sickness &/or Pain
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Anxiety, Depression,
& Other Negative Feelings
After taking these into account, students will begin brainstorming solutions to some of these problems in society. In groups, students will present proposals to ways in which society can solve these issues.
Students will also complete a web quest where they will find local organizations that provide people with resources for these social issues.
WEEK 3: ANALYZING MEMORY; HOW THE PAST
AFFECTS THE PRESENT (AND FUTURE)
To further understand why we encounter social injustices in our society, students must understand how some of these injustices were formed. Students will investigate some of the political reasons that issues they studied in the previous week exist. In doing so, they will learn how remembering past injustices can lead to halting them in the future.
Students will begin writing an expository research paper explaining political reasons why social injustices exist in today's society. They will analyze past and present government policies, citing them and articles related to them to explain why some of these injustices exist.
In groups, students will compare the government in The Giver to our own government. They will begin questioning whether the government in The Giver as well as in real life is acting in a way that helps, or hurts, society.
WEEK 4: PERSUADING GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
TO CHANGE UNFAIR POLICIES
Students will bring back the formulated solutions for solving social injustices from Week 2 and reinforce them with the knowledge they have gained from their research. Using this knowledge students will begin writing three separate letters to one local, one state, and one federal Government officials.
They will write these letters with the intention of persuading real world lawmakers to make changes in policies that could end the social injustices that they have researched. They will add in the solutions they have brainstormed.
Students will also add connections they see between the government in The Giver and our own government into the letters, explaining why the actions of both governments are problematic. They will send these letters to the lawmakers.
WEEK 5: REEXAMINING THE SOCIETY OF THE GIVER
At the beginning of the unit, students were asked to examine whether the society of The Giver closer resembled a utopian or dystopian society, and make a continued T-Chart of characteristics of the society that fall into either category. Now that they have completed the novel and their charts, students will reexamine their responses to the initial question of whether the society in The Giver is utopian or dystopian.
Students will rewrite their first persuasive essay of the unit: persuading readers to believe that Jonas's society is utopian or dystopian, using their T-Charts to cite specific evidence to support their claim.
After competing their essays, they will share what side they have agreed with with the class in a group discussion of the book overall.
WEEK 6: EXAMINING DIFFERENT FUTURE OUTCOMES
Students will begin reading the graphic novel, E.X.O.: The Legend of Wale Williams - Part 1. They will begin making a continued chart comparing the future in the graphic novel to the future in The Giver.
Students will also begin looking for signals of injustice in the graphic novel, such as poverty, hunger, racism and discrimination, homelessness, sickness, etc. as they did in the book The Giver. This time, students will examine how the different format and imaginative storyworld of E.X.O. differs in how it portrays these problems.
Students will also be tasked with beginning to learn about the setting, Lagos, Nigeria and the history and culture of Lagos as a means of understanding the current and future problems that Lagos faces in reality and the storyworld.
WEEK 7: UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMATIC OPPRESSION
AND ITS AFFECTS ON THE CURRENT AND FUTURE.
Students will continue to critically analyze the systematic oppression of Nigeria along with all of Africa due to colonization in the worlds history. They will examine articles written addressing past issues, including government corruption, that have lead to the injustices that Lagos experiences today.
After analyzing expose-style journal articles about the corruption in Lagos, with a better understanding of the history of oppression, students will write their own expose journal articles that write about systematic oppression that they have learned about in Lagos - citing sources from the articles that they have read. They will make references to the graphic novel and depictions of this corruption and the injustices that follow within it.
WEEK 8: PRACTICING STORYTELLING SOCIAL INJUSTICES THROUGH THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
As students have finished E.X.O., they will discuss as a class what they enjoyed about reading a graphic novel depicting the future. They will compare the difference between reading about the future in a novel form vs. graphic novel form, what they liked and disliked about each, and what they would change about the unit if they were the teacher.
Now that the graphic novel has been completed, students will use the remainder of the week - possibly extending into a 9th week - for a writers/illustrators workshop where they will create their own graphic novel with a central theme surrounding one of the social injustices that they have explored throughout the reading of E.X.O. or The Giver, in a futuristic setting.
At the end of the writers/illustrators workshop, students will be given a class period to do a "book tasting" activity, reading several of their classmates graphic novels to see the different ways in which the peers have portrayed social injustices and their affects on the future.