Social Studies Lesson Plan in 5E model

4th grade

Subject:

History

Intro to Civil Rights Movement

Integrate literacy components (Comparing and Contrasting)

Standards:

6.1.4.D-16 - Describe how stereotyping and prejudice lead to conflict, using examples
from the past and the present.

6.1.4.D.-20- Describe why it is important to understand the perspectives of other cultures

in an interconnected world.

RL.4.9- Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics and patterns of
events and stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.

RL.4.2- Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize
the text.

RI.4.6- Compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or
topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided.

Objective:

Students will be able to determine how African Americans were treated in the 50s by
personal experience. They will also be able to use inferences to determine the importance
of how this affected the history of the United States.

Materials:

Index Cards

Green and Red Marker

Devices

Articles about segregation

Engage:

As the students walk in or take their seats, give the students an index card with either a
red or a green x marked on it.

Explain that the students with the green X will sit in the back of the classroom together
on the floor, while the students with the red X will sit in the front of the classroom. Next,
ask the students to place their cards face up at their seats.

This will automatically get the students interested and want to continue on with the
lesson.

Explore:

Bring students to the carpet.

o

Read aloud Sneetches by Dr. Seuss

Read up to page 5. Stop after reading page 5 and ask students to turn and talk with
a partner and discuss the differences between star bellied sneetches and plain
bellied sneetches.

Continue reading till the end of the book and ask students to keep the plot in mind
while the lesson continues.

Ask students to go back to their seats.

Next, ask the green group to give all their school supplies to the red group. Then explain
to the students that only the red group will have access to the chrome books, ipads, tabs,
and computers. It may help to explain that there is only enough for them so they get it.
The green group will get old, ripped, and out of date textbooks or printed out articles.

Give the students 10 minutes to research the civil rights movement. They will be writing
all information that they find on a piece of paper.

The green group will struggle in finding information while the red group will find this
easily. (Green group will most likely ask for more time)

This is when the students will begin to argue and voice their opinion on the unfairness of
what is happening in the classroom. After the 10 minutes of research ask the students if
they would like to continue to treat the classroom as separate classrooms. Most, if not all
the students should agree that this is unfair and it should be stopped.

Explain:

Have the students turn and tell a partner why they think unequal treatment is unfair.

Share aloud.

Explain to the students what happened in the classroom and what the red and green Xs
represented in the time of the civil rights movement.

Elaborate:

Make sure to thoroughly explain what the Civil Rights Movements was.
o

Separate but equal (call on a student)

Segregated schools

Bring in vocabulary words like segregation, discrimination, prejudice, etc.

Have students stop and jot down what the Civil Rights Movement is similar to. Give hints
like what did we read earlier. Have students also right why they think the teacher read
The Sneetches to them.
o

They should begin to think how it related to the Civil Rights Movement.

Whites v.s. Blacks and Starred Bellied Sneetches v.s. Plain Bellied Sneetches.

Evaluation:

Ask students to fill out an exit card. This exit card will be a venn diagram comparing and
contrasting blacks with plained bellied sneetches at the beginning of the story. Then on

the back they will write a short paragraph explaining how the ending is similar to present
day America.