Unconscious Bias
Our unconscious bias unit traces inequality from the 1860's through today. Specifically, the unit focuses on unconscious bias, and how much of the inequality that lingers in our country isn't the blatant, purposeful racism of the 1960's, but is in fact more subtle, and in some ways, more insidious than that. We'll even engage in a Harvard Study to measure our own unconscious bias, and to help advance the field of inequality research.
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Topic 1: Essentially Questioning
In this, the first week of our inequality unit, we write questions that drive our learning for the rest of the unit. Because it's such a valuable use of our time, we spend the entire week writing, evaluating, refining, and voting on the questions we want to answer. We'll also utilize some reader-response theory to discuss how inequality has affected our lives.
Lesson Plans |
Materials |
Wednesday, 11/5/2019
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Today, we will use a four-corner's discussion protocol to connect students' lives with the reality of inequality using Reader Response Theory. Basically, students see a statement projected, and walk to one of the four corners of the classroom based on their response. They choose to "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree," or "strongly disagree." All they need to earn credit for the day is respond verbally to justify where they walked.
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Thursday, 11/6/2019
In this lesson, intended to develop schema about inequality, we'll start with a gallery-walk protocol during which students react to images of inequality. (This year responses will be tracked in a Google form to assess text complexity and prevent copying.) We will then utilize a second mix and mingle protocol using sentence strips describing the golden rule to build schema about the universality of equality (in theory) contrasted with the universality of inequality (in reality. |
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Friday, 11/7/2019
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During this lesson, students will start by examining the word cloud generated by our image analysis. They'll start with a group-based "observe and infer" protocol to essentially do a modified close read of the word cloud itself to build understanding. After sharing and clarifying their understanding of the cloud itself, students will work with their groups to write ten open-ended questions about inequality based on the word cloud. They'll use our inquiry-based learning sentence frames to help. Once they have written ten questions, they'll choose their three best based on our Quality Question Criteria. We'll then perform a hosted gallery walk where one group member will get feedback from the other groups. At this point, groups will winnow down their three top questions to the one best question based on their peer's feedback, and they'll turn in their top question.
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This word cloud was generated from yesterday's form responses. It is amazingly better than the cloud formed during the start of our refugee unit.
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Topic 2: Historical Significance
Our second week is focused on the historical significance of inequality. While most of the unit focuses on the current iterations of unconscious bias, it's important that students make the connection to the texts dating back to the 1860's, when women and minorities were already asking for the same kinds equality that they're still fighting to enjoy today. We'll use three differentiated passages depending on our students' reading level, and utilize some jigsaw methodology to share an accurate picture of the history of inequality in our country.
Monday 11/12/2019: IAT Day
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During today's lesson, we'll actually take part in advancing the field of inequality in our country by participating in a study that over five million people have already taken. It's an amazing survey that uses simple words and images to figure out how your brain works before you have the chance to think and process your answer. While we'll start with some explanations of how the survey works, and what some of the demographic questions mean, largely, students are engaging with the test itself.
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Tuesday - Wednesday, 11/13/2019 - 11/14/2019 Close Read Jigsaw
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Close Read Protocol
After this activity, students will begin to engage in one of three close reads based on their reading level. Like the quotes, these reading passages will cover hundreds of years of history without a meaningful move towards equality. |
Friday 11/15/2019 Mind Mapping
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A “mind map” is a way to create a visual representation to organize knowledge. It works the same way that the synapses of a brain function, so it’s an incredibly useful tool to use to think about, acquire, and remember new or complex information. The focus of a mind map is not on individual pieces of trivia, it’s on the connections between the information, and on creating the bigger picture.
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"Choice Week" Lessons - [Three Weeks]
**Our equality unit occurs between Halloween and St. Patrick's Day. With Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, President's Day, MLK day, February break, etc. planning for five-day weeks for our equality unit is just short sighted. Instead of planning Monday-Friday weeks, the outline below shows the work our students will do for each text. Those days might span part of a single week, or several calendar weeks depending on how they fall. Regardless, students will chose three of the six texts below with which to read and engage.
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Day 1: TED Talk
Students will watch the TED Talk they choose on the first day of each "choice week." They'll use our digital Notice/Wonder chart to demonstrate their learning as they watch.
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Day 2 & 3: Close Read
This unit's texts are [shudder] paper-based. I know, it's painful for me too. all the links below are live, but we'll print physical copies of this unit's texts based on our student's requests. With a non-traditional unit like this, technology tools, even Google Classroom, are just not equipped to handle the level of student choice and differentiation I've built in.
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Day 4: Engagement / Novelty
I've found that for students to remain engaged in a classroom, there needs to be some novelty built it. One day a week of novelty amidst well-practiced learning structures seems like enough to maintain student's attention. While not linked yet, our novel learning structures each week will be:
Week 1: Peardeck-Enhanced Slides
Week 2: Mind Mapping Week 3: Four Lines, Two Circles of Inequality |
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Choice Week: Student-Engaged AssessmentThe trick to teaching is to make sure students understand the mistakes they're making in an emotion-free context before moving on to attempt a similar activity for a second time. The Peardeck-enhanced Slides we'll use weekly will show students how their annotations are being graded, and engage them in the grading process themselves, before they move on to their next choice-week text selection.
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Verna MyersVerna Myers starts her speech with a staggering connection between a book she was reading about violence against young, black men from the early 1900's, and the recent radio reports about violence against young, black men from today. She shares some insight about the uselessness of pretending to be "color blind" and the importance of admitting our biases to overcome them.
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Yasmin Abdel-MagiedYasmin Abdel-Magied transforms both her wardrobe, and our perceptions about inequality with her insightful speech about how the world looks at her differently depending on the cloth she chooses, or chooses not to wear. We'll continue building connections between how the different sub groups experience inequality.
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Emily Scheck *No TED Talk*
Based on this year's gender-specific questions, we needed to add more texts about how gender identity and sexuality create inequality. We dumped some of the women's rights specific texts from last year in favor of this text from November, 2018 about how sexuality still impacts people's lives.
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Yoruba RichenYoruba Richen makes connections between the civil rights movement's success in Barrack Obama's becoming president, and the gay rights' movements recent success. Like most of our speakers, her vision of civil rights is not one representing a single perspective: she represents two groups, each struggling for equality.
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Halla ThomasdottirHalla Thomasdottir shares excellent advice in her speech. We learn about Iceland, the most equal country in the world. Most importantly, we learn about how important it is for women to run for office, whether or not they win the election. You will never, in your entire life, experience a more hopeful message delivered by the "loser" of an election.
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Aaron HueyIn this, the most moving of our speeches, we examine "Manifest Destiny" from the perspective of the losing side, and we realize that what we learn as a great time in American history is only great advancement for the U.S. based on the great loss of our Native American population. As our final group, our connections are now complete, and we can use all the evidence we've accrued to answer the questions we posed in week one.
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Text Choices, Arriving for 2020
Runner's World: Runner's Alliance
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Alaa MurabitAs Americans, it's so easy to demonize the Islamic faith without truly understanding the nuances. Alaa Murabit emphatically covers the importance of understanding before casting judgment, and as such, this TED Talk is incredibly powerful for anyone who has felt that brief tug of unconscious bias, or even uncertainty of expectation, when in the presence of our Muslim women. Alaa looks at inequality through the lens of business, and as such, offers a unique perspective for our Unconscious Bias unit.
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This stunning TED Talk shares some insight about the bias that occurs against women in some countries even today. Besides the tragic violence (and subsequent triumph) Ziauddin Yousafzai is an equality pioneer because as a man, he is deeply passionate about fighting for women's right to equal education and opportunities.
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Final Essay
Essay DescriptionOur essay this unit will answer the essential questions our students created during our first week. Regardless of the questions, the essay will connect how different groups across history and countries have suffered from, and worked to overcome inequality.
Amazing Student Exemplars: |
Success Skills
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Essay Materials
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Unconscious Bias Connection ToolThis tool helps students to organize their writing in a few ways. It "chunks" the writing process into manageable tasks - finding evidence as they read or watch, and explaining the evidence as soon as they find it, instead of weeks after. By using a clear, table format, it helps students to see the structure of writing because it is literally structured. Also, it makes the writing process less scary, because they've done most of it ahead of time. By and large, when they sit down to write their paragraphs and essay, they can copy and paste their own work, allowing them to focus on the finer nuances of writing.
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Writing Tools PageThe goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools below are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. What matters to my students and their parents are the tools below, and how they're used.
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Essay Differentiation
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This essay prompt provides sentence frames for all transitions throughout. Students assigned this claim will demonstrate a literal understanding by summarizing a few of our texts.
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This essay prompt provides an in-depth outline making it easy for students with a literal understanding of some of our texts to use their work throughout the unit to organize an effective essay. Sentence frames are provided for the introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
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This essay prompt provides an in-depth outline making it easy for students with quality, grade-level analysis of most of our texts to use their work throughout the unit to organize a beautiful essay.
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With sparse directions, and requiring an in-depth analysis of every text to which students have access, this assignment stretches what it's possible for 8th-grade students to produce.
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