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What is Justice?
Students begin to explore African American history and the civil rights movement, serving as a launch for further discussions around discrimination, justice, and valuing individuals.
ELA
Unit 6
Kindergarten
Unit Summary
In this unit, students begin to explore African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. Students will begin the unit by thinking about the ways in which people are similar and different, including skin color, and how those differences should not define who we are or how we are treated.Students will then learn about the discrimination and injustices faced by African Americans leading up to and during the civil rights movement and why it was necessary to fight for change. They will learn about how communities came together to organize and stand up to injustice, including how Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.’s influential leadership influenced and inspired others to fight for change. It is our hope that this unit will help instill the values of diversity, justice, and action, and that it will serve as a launch for further discussions around discrimination, justice, and valuing individuals.
Students are challenged to think about how authors include specific reasons and illustrations to help the reader understand a particular idea or point in the text. Students also continue to explore how details are connected, and how understanding the connection between details helps the reader understand the text. When participating in discussions, students use all of the strategies from previous units to hone in on their speaking and listening skills, focusing on continuing a conversation through multiple exchanges.
Students continue to work on building writing fluency by writing daily in response to Target Tasks. Students practice producing simple sentences, using conjunctions to expand sentences, and using different types of sentences depending on what they are writing. Across the unit, students also have multiple opportunities to build on what they learned in previous units to write informational pieces, naming and then including some information about atopic.
Please Note: By November 2025, this unit and its lesson plans will be updated to reflect a round of enhancements that improve writing, language, and reading instruction.
Texts and Materials
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Core Materials
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Book: All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold (Knopf Books for Young Readers; Illustrated edition, 2018) — AD370L
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Book: Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester (HarperCollins; Illustrated edition, 2008)
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Book: All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka (HarperCollins, 2020) — AD540L
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Book: Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You by Sonia Sotomayor (Philomel Books; Illustrated edition, 2019)
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Book: This Is the Dream by Diane Z. Shore and Jessica Alexander (Amistad; 1 edition, 2009)
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Book: The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson (G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 2001) — AD490L
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Book: Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles (Aladdin; Reprint edition, 2005) — AD600L
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Book: Rosa by Nikki Giovanni (Square Fish; Reprint edition, 2007) — 800L
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Book: Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport (Hyperion Book CH; Reprint edition, 2007) — 410L
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Book: We March by Shane W. Evans (Square Fish; Reprint edition, 2016) — 290L
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Book: A Sweet Smell of Roses by Angela Johnson (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition, 2007) — AD480L
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Book: I Have a Dream by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Kadir Nelson (Dragonfly Books, 2024) — 1030L
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Book: Be A King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream and You by Carole Boston Weatherford (Bloomsbury USA Childrens; Illustrated edition, 2018) — 360L
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Assessment Text: “A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation” by Barry Wittenstein and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney (Neal Porter Book) — 990LL
Supporting Materials
- Resource: Book List for Further Reading
Assessment
The following assessments accompany Unit 6.
Content Assessment
The Content Assessment pushes students to synthesize unit content knowledge or unit essential questions in writing. The Content Assessment should be used as the primary assessment because it shows mastery of unit content knowledge and standards.
Cold Read Assessment
The Cold Read Assessment tests students' ability to comprehend a "cold" or unfamiliar passage and answer standards-based questions. The Cold Read Assessment can be given in addition to the Content Assessment as a pulse point for what students can read and analyze independently, a skill often required for standardized testing.
Unit Prep
Intellectual Prep
Essential Questions
- What makes us different? What makes us the same?
- Why was the civil rights movement important?
Reading Focus Areas
- Authors include specific reasons and illustrations to support points in a text.
- To understand an informational text, readers think about how details are connected.
Writing Focus Areas
Informational Writing Focus Areas
- Name the topic they are writing about.
- Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to include some information about the topic.
Speaking and Listening Focus Areas
- Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges.
- Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.
Vocabulary
Text-based
boycottbravecourageouscustomdenydiversitydreamenforcefreedomhopefulinjusticeinspirejusticeneutralnonviolentraceracismsegregationsimilaritythreatenuniqueunequalvicious
To see all the vocabulary for Unit 6, view our Kindergarten Vocabulary Glossary.
Supporting All Students
In order to ensure that all students are able to access the texts and tasks in this unit, it is incredibly important to intellectually prepare to teach the unit prior to launching the unit. Use the intellectual preparation protocol and the Unit Launch to determine which support students will need. To learn more, visit the Supporting all Students teacher tool.
Content Knowledge and Connections
This unit builds a deeper understanding of the following Social Justice Standards: The Learning for Justice Anti-bias Framework (Learning for Justice):
- Identity 1: I know and like who I am and can talk about my family and myself and name some of my group identities.
- Identity 2: I can talk about interesting and healthy ways that some people who share my group identities live their lives.
- Diversity 7: I can describe some ways that I am similar to and different from people who share my identities and those who have other identities.
- Diversity 8: I want to know about other people and how our lives and experiences are the same and different.
- Justice 12: I know when people are treated unfairly.
- Justice 13: I know some true stories about how people have been treated badly because of their group identities, and I do not like it.
- Justice 14: I know that life is easier for some people and harder for others and the reasons for that are not always fair.
- Justice 15: I know about people who helped stop unfairness and worked to make life better for many people.
- Action 17: I can and will do something when I see unfairness; this includes telling an adult.
- Action 20: I will join with classmates to make our classroom fair for everyone.
To prepare for this unit, we recommend reading the following resources.
Future Fishtank ELA Connections
Lesson Map
Common Core Standards
Core Standards
Supporting Standards
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