Grassroots

NAME:
Grassroots Pitches
Subject/Grade:
12th Grade ELA
Key Text(s)/
Materials:

March by John Lewis
Student-conducted research
Available tools: Canva, Piktochart, WeVideo, Google Suite, Wix, etc.



Connections to Unit of Study




ENDURING UNDERSTANDING

What is the function of youth civic engagement and civil disobedience in our ever-globalizing world?

Student-friendly: Can youth really make a change?


Narrative:

In this 4-week ERWC unit, students explore grassroots movements. At this point in the unit, students have spent four weeks: reading the graphic novel March by John Lewis, reading several modern speeches regarding civil rights for various marginalized groups, and will hear stories of activists from all sides of the political aisle, history, and globe. In the final nine school days of the unit, students research, debate, discuss, evaluate, and create multimodal literature all related to activism. Rather than simply absorbing Black, Brown, Indegenous, LGBTQ+ history and appreciating it from afar, students will enact social justice. This particular lesson features a whole class performance assessment in which students orally present their grassroots projects to the class.
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:

How can we use writing to enact social justice?
What is the power of rhetoric in social movements?
Does youth use of technology enhance or harm civic engagement?



Prior to this unit, students have created a podcast and participated in a mock trial. Students have participated in several Socratic Seminars, and speaking/listening with an evaluative and justifying lens has been emphasized prior to this.
Unit Objectives


Transfer Goal

SWBAT conduct and evaluate critical research regarding modern social/political/environmental/economic issues, to develop an action plan and create a multimodal grassroots project.


Learning Objective



Speakers: SWBAT persuade a diverse audience via a grassroots presentation to act on a social justice issue in modern America.

Listeners: SWBAT evaluate classmates’ grassroots projects with written feedback as a tool in enhancing their own projects.





Language

SWBAT write evaluative questions with strong action verbs.
Integrated Standards

Present information, findings, and supporting evidence (e.g., reflective, historical investigation, response to literature presentations), conveying a clear and distinct perspective and a logical argument, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks. Use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation. SL.11-12.4

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information. W.11-12.6
Verbally analyzing “adult” topics in an authentic environment, such as civil rights in the modern era, helps all students become 21st century literate (Sociocultural theory & ELD Framework).

This oral assessment measures students’ acquisition of critical thinking skills as generated by the performance lesson. In their written responses, they are evaluating what they took away as important from their peers’ presentations. By first expressing in writing and then critiquing orally in tandem with others, this is a gradual release of responsibility that eases students into higher cognitive literacy skills.



Learning Theory



Social Cognitive Learning Theory
Social Theories say that students make meaning with the teacher and others through scaffolds. Social Cognitive Theory specifically states that learners learn from each other by way of modeling, and learn to self-regulate. Clear objective and pacing, authentic, relevant instruction, and whole-group scaffolds like the introductory presentation slides allow students to meet the cognitively challenging task.
Characteristics of the Learner:


Narrative:
This particular class is ethnically homogenous (90% Hispanic) but the students are incredibly diverse economically, politically (from what they’ve written previously), as well as socially. Therefore, students have diverse political positions; based on previous seminars and debates, students clearly express powerful interest in politics and protests. For these reasons, the myriad positions regarding modern civil rights were emphasized through the writing, and the carefully structured performance lesson is inherently enriched by having so many perspectives in the class. Students in this period have privately (in writing and in student support) expressed frustration at not feeling comfortable saying what they want to say for fear of retribution. This unit teaches students to use their voices to express how they truly feel about critical issues in modern America - in an intellectual way, backed by credible evidence. This lesson challenges students to listen to positions they may not agree with, to enhance their abilities to consider others’ diverse perspectives - an empathetic skill many are lacking.
Prerequisite skills:


Skills students will need to fully engage in the lesson:

Speak with confidence
Generate a claim
Pose questions
Use examples to support claims
Listen respectfully & evaluate
My rationale for the lesson is centered around the role of motivation and the need to activate schema. I want students to explore horizons of possibilities (Langer) and perceive the subjective nature
of persuasion. Students have been generating claims and learning to speak confidently since an early ERWC unit in September, and have acquired the skills of research, using examples, and listening respectfully since December over the course of previous projects and group work. This lesson again asks students to move beyond using personal anecdotes and instead provide more formal types of evidence: historical, statistical, etc.
Differentiation to address continuum of skill sets and to address antiracist pedagogy:
Brief narrative of aspects of lesson in need of differentiation & why (content, process, product) + (culturally responsive pedagogy & critical literacy) :
Roughly 50% of students in the class are ELs. Therefore, the academic language of civic engagement will be challenging and may act as a barrier to entry. Krashen supposes that “when learners have high motivation, self-esteem, confidence, a good self-image, and low anxiety, they are more receptive to learning content and thus better equipped for success in L2 acquisition” (Li, 2016, p. 29). I have differentiated here by allowing students to work on the project in groups. Each group is free to determine roles among themselves. Because ELs benefit from multiple means of expression (being able to represent their research findings as multimedia), ELs practiced using academic language in their written compositions when preparing for the project by helping to research and formulate claims. Although there was not enough time for questions during the performance lesson (class sizes are huge), this research and role-choosing allows all students to practice higher-order thinking when in collaborative groups. This enhances their acquisition of CALP in the L2 (Cummins). This promotes equity: I want all of my students to be able to participate in the higher-order processes of research, synthesis, and oral expression, as these are the very 21st century skills that will lead them to success next year after high school (ELA-ELD Framework).
Beginning of Lesson (INTO):
Cite research/ theory informing the start of the lesson)
Detail WHAT will take place in the first 10 minutes:

Stress check in
Opening activity:
Chat waterfall Word association. 5 words.
Students type the first word that pops up in their minds after the teacher says one word at a time like “fruit, hate, etc…”
The teacher asks students to look at the wide variety of reaction-words in the chat.
The teacher asks everyone to type in the chat what they believe social justice means.
“Everyone has different feelings and opinions when experiencing the same source material.”
Teacher: “Well that’s what is important here today. I would like us all to genuinely listen to one another, with the thought in mind that we all have different reactions, and nobody is right or wrong. That’s what social justice is: listening respectfully.”
The teacher will read a few chat responses and validate these. Pause for questions.
The teacher links the presentation order, along with links to the rubric and peer-evaluation form in the chat.


Narrative:





This activity doesn’t just motivate students for the sake of being “fun;” rather, my intention is to help students become independent learners by bridging the gap between what they already know and the critical thinking skills they are about to practice. Hammond says it best: “To empower dependent learners and help them become independent learners, the brain needs to be challenged and stretched beyond its comfort zone with cognitive routines and strategy” (Hammond, 2014, p. 49).



Student engagement through learning activity (THROUGH):

Instructional Activities:



Narrative:

Students are assigned to speak in a predetermined, randomized order (courtesy of PickerWheel).
The first student group orally presents their grassroots project. Students are told they have between 3 and 8 minutes to present, as this will span the course of two class meetings.
The audience (other students) will complete the peer evaluation form while listening thoughtfully to the presentations.
The next presenter will begin, and this cycle will continue.
The teacher may pause between presentations periodically to ensure students have time to take notes, ask questions, or comment in the chat in response to the grassroots projects.



The continuous oral interaction among students in this debate uses Vygotky’s sociocultural theory:
-Students complete tasks within their ZPD, with the assistance of a graphic organizer and peers.
-Engage students in adult activities (discussion around modern civil rights).
-Encourage students to talk themselves through difficult tasks (explain thinking and significance).
-Provide cognitive tools (sample questions) to make tasks easier.


Closing (BEYOND?):


How will the lesson end and bridge to learning for the future/ extend learning?

Immediately after this - students will be asked to revise their projects based on peer questions and feedback, as well as write a brief reflection about the importance of having “tough” conversations.


Acceptable Evidence



Oral presentation of Grassroots project
“One of the most important tasks of critical educational practice is to make possible the conditions in which the learners, in their
interaction with one another and with their teachers, engage in the experience of assuming themselves as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons; dreamers of possible utopias, capable of being angry because of a capacity to love” (Freire, 1998, p. 45).


Completing the peer evaluation Google form




This is informed by Langer who states that “students use their interactions with others to explore new horizons of possibilities” (Langer, 2011, p. 9).


Assessment:
Exit Ticket: Final question of the peer-evaluation form asks students to describe one grassroots movement that they did not fully agree with, explain why, and analyze why it’s important to listen to other perspectives respectfully.
By responding to their peers’ forms, students are invited to draw connections between their perspectives and their peers’: “life? Why not establish an “intimate” connection between knowledge considered basic to any school curriculum and knowledge that is the fruit of the lived experience of these students as individuals?” (Freire, 1998, p. 36).
What comes next:
Students will revise and publish their projects.
Students will publish their work. This will allow them to see that social justice is much more doable than they may have originally perceived, and that it is possible to enact justice in their daily lives.




ICT
Building up to this performance lesson, students navigated online databases to research credible historical, literary, political, and artistic content related to their chosen social, political, economic, or environmental issue. This is primarily where information management came into play. Students cited all credible information on their Part A research paper.
Students collaborated digitally on platforms including but not limited to Google Slides, Piktochart, Instagram, WeVideo, Google Sites to create a multimedia activist project. The open-ended nature of the final product also meant that students were free to complete their projects on traditional poster-boards or give a live “soapbox” speech.
Students were constantly communicating via Gmail, text messages, Zoom, and Google Docs comments with their activist group.
These ICT skills were used in a way that promoted 21st century skills and NML skills because students had to collaborate and acquire data that would best suit the needs of their final product.

NML
While navigating online search engines including Google Scholar and a provided sociology database all about social movements, students were tasked with using a Critical Thinking “cheat sheet” (see lesson materials) to sift through to locate credible, noteworthy information that would drive the rationale for their grassroots movement.
Based on evidence-based data that included their own online research as well as the speeches and civil rights narratives we have read and watched, students developed problem-solving skills by collectively determining the best course of action to address their chosen social, political, economic, or environmental issue.
Networking, negotiation, transmedia navigation, and judgement all played a role in helping students determine a “cause” and product for their movement. They were tasked with considering multiple perspectives, synthesizing information, and navigating multiple modalities in the quest for civic engagement.
In the creation of the product itself, students were immersed in collective intelligence, multitasking, appropriation, and distributed cognition, as they worked with classmates online to develop a digital or real-world product that captured the message of their original movement.
It was fully up to students’ critical and logical capacities to decide whether a Prezi or a poster board, for example, would best invite collective action in response to a local, regional, national, or global issue. Literacy skills were fully at play in the creation of the product as well, as students were thinking critically about which rhetorical strategies would best serve their purposes.
The Grassroots Pitch portion, featured in the lesson itself, is a culmination of all these ICT and NML skills that led up to the presentation. Through simulating a symposium, students interpreted the messages provided by their classmates. This evaluation of their classmates’ products therefore increased both NML and 21st century skills.
Through the performance of their product and being able to play the role of an activist, students were invited to think critically about the reliability of political messages and about the efficacy of social movements.
NML skills were at the forefront of the performance lesson, as students began to discover through an enactment just how powerful youth-led social movements are and have been. Rather than absorb this content from afar, students are evaluating and coming to grips with the power of rhetoric, art, and technology.
The performance lesson also highlighted a key component of NML skills — which is that myriad perspectives are a critical feature of a functioning and progressive society.
Collective intelligence (the NML skills they are practicing in the performance lesson) is synonymous with collection action (the content they are observing in the grassroots pitches).

ISTE
In an attempt to persuade their classmates to adopt and take action on their grassroots cause, each student group primarily practiced the ISTE standard of “Creative Communicator.” This was evidenced by the collective groups as they used multiple technologies to devise an original piece of art/work.
All throughout Parts A and B of the prompt which made the performance lesson possible, students were primarily focused on the ISTE standard of “Digital Citizen” - because it was critical that students create a movement that rested on a foundation of solid evidence. A major theme of the unit is to realize that true change is a product of gazing back upon history with an “arm reaching out to the future” - very much like any cultural renaissance. Studying past movements with a critical lens and using listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills within a framework of technology to build their own modern collective action is honestly like a renaissance. It is my hope that these skills stick with them for life. The youth can make a change - that’s why I asked students to publish their work and in fact, many of their Instagram and Google Sites pages are live and ready to spark a real movement!
Creativity is at the forefront of the lesson. As stated in the Prezi prompt (see lesson materials), students are not simply watching and learning about an old social movement — they are “putting engage back into civic engagement” by creating their own grassroots movement. Therefore, the sky was the limit, prodding students to showcase innovation, critical thinking, and resourcefulness.