Lesson Plan #5: Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Origins

Course: 9th Grade English

Standards and Objectives:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1.D
Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarize points of agreement and
disagreement, and, when warranted, qualify or justify their own views and understanding and
make new connections in light of the evidence and reasoning presented.

Students will present on their familys cultures and traditions for todays topic: race,
ethnicity, language, and origin

Student Background: Students have been learning and discussing each part of the Identity
Wheel, which include race, ethnicity, language, culture, age, ability, class, gender, sexuality,
and religion. They have been able to reflect on how each section coincide with each other and
how each section affects them in society. Today is the last part of the wheel: race, ethnicity,
language, and origin. They will be presenting an About Me project on those topics to discover
how each culture is celebrated.

Materials and Resources:

Identity Wheel

Learning Activities:
1. Initiation: Students will begin class by have a journal entry reflecting on the artifact they
brought in. They will then do quick shares in their groups about what they reflected on,
they will vote on which artifact they want to bring forward to the class, and there will be a
group share out on the chosen artifact for each group. The journal entry prompt will be
presented in multiple languages, and the students will have to translate it. They will
reflect on how they feel reading in another language.
2. Learning Activities: I will read them excerpts of House of Houses by Pat Mora, a book
that discusses mixes of cultures and evolved cultures in her house from her family
members beyond the grave.
3. I will have the students take notes of the races mentioned, her ethnicity, and any cultural
aspects that are in the book like traditions, language, and family origins. They will use
this as a guide for an in-class writing on their own families.
4. In class, they will take the interviews of their own family members and write on their own
traditions using quotes from their families and different aspects of culture noted. This will
be a formative assessment on how they will use aspects of argumentative writing, like
using quotes as a guide in their writing, and it will be practice in writing in a narrative
format similar to their final project.
5. Their ticket out the door is their writing.
6. Homework:Over the weekend, they will be putting together their People Bag, having
one artifact on each section of the Identity Wheel to be presented Monday.