Unit Overview

VIDEO PROJECT: EDUCATION: What Does it Mean? What is it worth?
Click image to see QuickTime® video.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the biographical novel that I use to teach students about the concepts of freedom and social development.

The social development concepts are designed to aid the students when deliberating about the theme of Social Justice, Social Reconciliation, and Social Transformation. The concepts that discuss freedom from oppression, as it relates to Frederick Douglass, are structured based on the issues presented in “Universal Declaration of Independence.”

According to Douglass, teaching an oppressed person to read “would forever unfit him to be a slave” (p78). When considering this quote, it becomes apparent that knowledge is akin to freedom. Therefore, I want students to know that literacy and academic development markedly improves (one’s life chances) the ability to function competitively in society and in the world.

Thus, this lesson plan is designed to encourage the student to read purposefully, learn reading strategies, and develop the student’s Expository Reading strategies for improving his critical thinking skills.

The goal of the lesson plan is to introduce and develop Expository Reading strategies, expand technologies in academics, and implement the CSTP and OUSD (ELA/ELD) standards including:

• Writing Strategies
• Literary Response
• Critical Thinking

The critical thinking strategies will focus on the theme of Social Justice, Social Reconciliation, and Social Transformation. These themes are designed to aid the student’s self-esteem, by highlighting how and why Frederick Douglass struggled to become a literate man. Consequently, the student learns that literacy is linked to the CA State and District Standards, which inform the Expository Reading strategies. Thus, the student learns to generalize about the reading materials, make inferences, and draw conclusions about the novel. Hence, literacy and academic standards inform the students’ critical thinking process, which ultimately aids in boosting in the self-esteem of the student.

The activities designed for this lesson plan include guided reading and writing strategies for assisting the student during the silent sustained reading (SSR) process. The student’s Expository Reading, Literary Responses, and Writing skills will be guided by the use of templates. The students will also learn the basic fundamentals of Expository Essay writing.

The student’s technology skills will be developed to include Internet Web searches on Human Rights issues, typed documents and essay writing will be completed using Microsoft word, and spell-check.

This lesson plan will also enable to the student to explore Human Rights issues that teach the concepts of Universal Liberty.