The Positive Impact of One Person

Title of Project: The Positive Impact of One Person

Schools and Teachers

Bethpage High School Teacher: Jillian De Napoli

ENL Proficiency Level | ENL Program | Standards | Technology

Appropriate for all levels | Stand-Alone | 9-10R2, 9-10W4, 9-10SL5 | Storyboard That

Assessments

Formative: Review students’ graphic organizers and meet with students to discuss their ideas for displaying kindness.

Summative: Assess students’ Storyboard That projects using rubric.

Description

Students will read a text and reflect about how one person can have an impact on a small community. Then, they will come up with ways they can show kindness to people all around them. Lastly, they will create a Storyboard That presentation to display these acts of kindness.

Content

I can identify a theme of a text and apply it to my own life.

Language

I can explain and write about how I can positively impact the many communities to which I belong.

Technology

I can use Storyboard That to create a visual representation of displays of kindness at school, at home, and in my community.

Procedure

This will take multiple days to complete. Begin by asking students how they, despite being just one person, can have a positive impact on a small community (their family, school, town, place of worship, etc.) Then, read All the Cats in the World by Sonia Levitin and reflect on the characters while also discussing the meaning of empathy. The students will answer questions about what the characters did well, what impact each had on the other characters, and what they could have done differently. After, we will brainstorm a list of ways that we can positively impact a person or group of people who are in need of help, similarly to how the cats in the story needed help. Students will complete a graphic organizer to record their ideas of how they could help someone at school, at home, and in the community. Then, the students will choose one act of kindness for each setting to create three cells on StoryboardThat.com. Their images will illustrate situations where people need help and ways that they could be kind to them. For each cell of their Storyboard, students will choose a background scene and characters. They can change the people’s hair, skin, and eye colors, and edit their facial expressions and poses by moving the character’s faces, arms, and legs. For each cell, students will write a caption to describe the situation and each person’s action. Students will also include how each person feels, both before and after the act of kindness was displayed. Lastly, students will present their Storyboards to the class, and we will have a discussion about the positive impact one person can have on their community.

Resources and Other Materials

Storyboard That Rubric

Reflection

I enjoyed introducing this mini-unit with the text All the Cats in the World. It was a great way to begin to think about how one person can positively impact their communities. When brainstorming ways to help others, my students were very focused on our current situation with COVID-19. Their ideas kept coming back to ways they could show kindness during the pandemic. Some of these included staying home to keep other people safe, sending letters to healthcare workers to thank them for their service, and reaching out to a friend in their native country or our school to check in on them. While the students were not able to complete their Storyboards yet due to the situation, they always enjoy using the program and having the opportunity to be creative while utilizing technology.

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