In speaking with my colleagues about the Common Core, one of the main concerns is finding lesson examples of the Common Core Standards. However, on April 18 through the 19th I attended a quarterly WestEd board meeting and Dr. Aida Walqui, who is Director of Teacher Professional Development at WestEd, was a guest presenter. Dr. Walqui is also an English Language Learner curriculum expert. Dr. Walqui’s presentation focused on a five-week ELL unit that is titled: Persuasion Across Time and Space: Analyzing and Producing Complex Texts.
Even though the unit consists of ELL lessons, Dr. Walqui states that the lessons are being piloted in Chicago in mixed ability classrooms with great success. The unit is specifically written for seventh and eighth grade students, but high school and elementary teachers can adjust the lessons accordingly to meet the needs of their students and it gives teachers an idea of what Common Core lessons should look like. To give readers an idea of the five-week lesson plan they are as follows:
Lesson 1
Advertising in the Contemporary World:
An Introduction to Persuasive Texts
Can You Live With Dirty Water
Lesson 2
Persuasion in Historical Context:
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address
Lesson 3
Ethos, Logos and Pathos in Civil Rights Movement Speeches:
Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream”
Robert Kennedy “On the Death of Martin Luther King”
George Wallace “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax”
Lesson 4
Persuasion as Text:
Organizational, Grammatical and Lexical Moves in Barbara Jordan’s All Together Now
Barbara Jordan “Altogether Now”
Lesson 5
Putting It Together: Analyzing and Producing Persuasive Text
The Girl Who Silenced the World for Five Minutes
For the past few weeks I have been reviewing the unit and find it to be teacher friendly and student engaging. Persuasion Across Time and Space: is a unit that I will use in my classroom next school year. If interested, one can download the entire unit at no cost from Stanford University’s Understanding Language Program. http://ell.stanford.edu/teaching_resources/ela
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