Unit Overview: Read more about the unit and find all unit materials here on the Fishtank website

In this unit, students begin to explore African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. Students will begin the unit by thinking about the ways in which people are similar and different, including skin color, and how those differences should not define who we are or how we are treated.Students will then learn about the discrimination and injustices faced by African Americans leading up to and during the civil rights movement and why it was necessary to fight for change. They will learn about how communities came together to organize and stand up to injustice, including how Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.’s influential leadership influenced and inspired others to fight for change. It is our hope that this unit will help instill the values of diversity, justice, and action, and that it will serve as a launch for further discussions around discrimination, justice, and valuing individuals.

Students are challenged to think about how authors include specific reasons and illustrations to help the reader understand a particular idea or point in the text. Students also continue to explore how details are connected, and how understanding the connection between details helps the reader understand the text. When participating in discussions, students use all of the strategies from previous units to hone in on their speaking and listening skills, focusing on continuing a conversation through multiple exchanges.

Students continue to work on building writing fluency by writing daily in response to Target Tasks. Students practice producing simple sentences, using conjunctions to expand sentences, and using different types of sentences depending on what they are writing. Across the unit, students also have multiple opportunities to build on what they learned in previous units to write informational pieces, naming and then including some information about a topic. 

Unit Calendar:

Unit 6 is 20 instructional days. It is recommended to run from March 9th - April 2nd.