Last updated: July 22, 2019
Lesson Plan
Lesson 4 - LIFE STORIES IN ACTIVISM
- Grade Level:
- High School: Ninth Grade through Twelfth Grade
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 90 Minutes
- Common Core Standards:
- 9-10.SL.1, 9-10.SL.1.a, 9-10.SL.1.b, 9-10.SL.1.c, 9-10.SL.1.d, 9-10.SL.2, 9-10.SL.3, 11-12.SL.1, 11-12.SL.1.a, 11-12.SL.1.b, 11-12.SL.1.c, 11-12.SL.1.d, 11-12.SL.2, 11-12.SL.3
- Additional Standards:
- National Council for the Social Studies
I: Culture
V. Individuals, Groups, & Institutions - Thinking Skills:
- Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words. Evaluating: Make informed judgements about the value of ideas or materials. Use standards and criteria to support opinions and views.
Essential Question
Why is it important to listen to the life stories of others?
What is the role of the individual in bringing positive change to society?
What are the consequences of dividing society by race?
Objective
Learn about the participation of New Orleans native Doratha Smith Simmons in the early Civil Rights Movement.
Demonstrate reading proficiency through a close reading/highlighting exercise of the text.
Developing an ability to do active listening that is important for life history work and ethnographic research.
Background
One of the most important skills in documenting oral histories is active listening. This lesson teaches students how to do a close listening of a conversation between a civil rights activist who helped raise her younger brother in a life in music. Students will be provided with an excerpt from Doratha Smith Simmons and Will Smith’s chapter in Talk That Music Talk. In groups of three, they will read the stories of civil rights organizing together out loud, focusing on remembering what they have read and heard. After doing a critical reading, they will work together to answer questions by directly highlighting the text. In the process, they will learn how well they were able to listen for the details that were important to the storytellers.
Preparation
MATERIALS NEEDED
- Handout of Edited Simmons/Smith interview
- Handout of Questions
- Highlighters
Materials
Download HANDOUT-READING AND LISTENING: LIFE HISTORIES OF ACTIVISM
Download HANDOUT-READING AND LISTENING: LIFE HISTORIES OF ACTIVISM - Answer Key
Lesson Hook/Preview
Ask students who is the best story teller that they know. What have they learned from that person?
Procedure
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Lead a classroom discussion on listening. What do you have to do to be a “good” listener? What are some examples of people who do a good job with it?
- Remembering sounds, like notes in music and or beats in different rhythm, and being able to recognize them when you hear them again, and/or be able to play it yourself.
- Listening to a story and being able to understand what the person who is speaking thinks is important about what they are saying, and being able to communicate this information back to that person in different formats, such as building on the conversation, asking follow-up questions, adjusting actions, and writing a story.
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Ask students to consider times when they were around a good and a bad listener (a parent, friend, teacher, coach, to name a few), and to volunteer some examples for the class. Once the class has a general understanding of what the differences are, have them develop a definition for “active listening”: Being fully present while another person is talking, following along and understanding what that person is saying, asking questions if there is any confusion, and being able to share what that person has to say in a way that rings true to them.
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Explain that active listening is an important part of being a good community organizer and ethnographer, and ask how well they think their own skill set is. Explain this lesson will help them learn about the experiences f civil rights workers from New Orleans, while also helping them to improve their active listening skills.
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Students should break out into groups of three, and receive an excerpt from Dodie and Will’s chapter that they will be able to underline.
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In their groups, each person will take on one of the narrative voices of Bruce, Dodie, or Will, and read the except out loud to one another, making sure that they are paying attention to what is being said.
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After the students complete the reading, ask them to put it aside while they answer a series of questions about what they have read. As a group, they should write down their answers to the questions. After they have completed all the answers, they can return to excerpt and find the direct answers from the narrators of the stories. Students will highlight these answers as a way of helping them return to the direct responses of the storyteller.
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After students have highlighted the answers, ask them to discuss in their group if there were things that they did not remember or were different from what the storytellers had originally shared. Ask each group to write down their responses in preparation for sharing with the entire class.
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Lead a classroom discussion about what they learned about Dodie’s experiences in the Civil Rights movement, what they learned about active listening, and what this might tell them about how history is remembered.
Vocabulary
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CORE- Acronym for the civil rights organization Congress of Racial Equality.
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NON-VIOLENCE- Civil rights philosophy and tactic of Dr. ML King which he acquired from Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi that violence should never be used. The idea was to seize the moral high ground and be an example of love as opposed to hate.
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DIRECT ACTION- Civil rights tactic of going into the streets and staging actions such as openly breaking segregation laws to demonstrate opposition to such laws.
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FREEDOM RIDERS- Civil rights workers who traveled through states of the southern U.S. to ascertain whether public facilities (such as bus terminals) are desegregated, and to protest against segregation based upon race.