In this unit, students consider the meaning of justice, the importance of bearing witness to acts of injustice, and whether bearing witness can be a form of justice. 

UNIT TEXTS

• Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
• The Murder of Emmett Till by Henrietta Toth
• A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson 

 

The unit’s nonfiction text, The Murder of Emmett Till, provides background knowledge on Emmett Till’s life and murder, and the important contributions his story made to the Civil Rights movement. A Wreath for Emmett Till offers a response to this tragedy in poetry. The unit novel, Ghost Boys, is an engaging magical realist text about a young African-American boy who is shot by a White police officer in modern-day Chicago. His ghost then meets the ghost of Emmett Till. The novel explores themes of race-based violence, justice and bearing witness. 

FLUENCY TOPICS

Trayvon Martin, Jim Crow, the KKK, Civil Rights, Tamir Rice, the South Side of Chicago, Peter Pan, polio, the Negro Leagues, anti-Semitism, Day of the Dead, Thurgood Marshall 

FOCUS

Literary analysis

• Analyzing interrelation of character, plot and setting
• Comparing and contrasting a fictional portrayal and a historical account of the same event

Reading comprehension

• Summarizing and clarifying as components of Reciprocal Teaching
• Using 5 Ws (who, did what, when, etc.) as a scaffold for summarizing
• Using and citing evidence from a text 

Decoding 

• Identifying base words and chunking compound words 
• Recognizing and chunking words with a base plus a prefix or suffix 

Debate 

• What could bring justice for Jerome?

English language development

• Orally and in writing, summarizing most important aspects of information
• Understanding figurative language and figures of speech in context