Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

This unit is for 6th Grade ELA and follows the District of Columbia Public Schools curriculum and prescribed novels of study. In this first unit students explore the themes of Racism and Discrimination in the Jim Crow south through a tumultuous story of how a group of children endure and overcome the powers and authority that surround them. Students will move through the unit by focal passages carefully selected to highlight 6th grade Common Core state standards and related sub-skills in Narrative writing and text analysis.

The instructional videos in this unit are built using Google Slides to embed content and guided practice and Explain Everything for voice recording and annotations. Once videos were completed in Explain Everything, they were transferred to PlayPosit to embed mid-roll questions for students as they complete the lesson.

This Student Survey will be given at the end of the Main Unit and at the end of the Narrative Writing process. The students will self-assess their progress this unit and name what they can do to improve before the next unit. This survey will be given 2 times per unit (at the end of text analysis and before the Unit cornerstone).

Below are the links to the Narrative Writing Mini-Unit

• Core Unit Documents & Resources

• 1.13: What Makes Good Writing

• 1.14: Introductions

• 1.15: Middle / Conflict

• 1.16: Ending

• 1.17: Imagery (Should Do)

• 1.18: Adding Dialogue (Should Do)

• 1.19: Suspense and Strong Transitions (Aspire to Do)

• 1.20: Figurative Language (Aspire to Do)