Social Justice Packet No. 7
The Peacemakers
Part of social justice is about supporting a peaceful and fair society in which to live. However, peace is not always a passive state. Peace must be asserted and maintained, for there are those who would want to impose peace through force rather than through maintenance of equal civil rights and fair distribution of services and society’s resources. The three peacemakers that are the focus of this packet, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, and Martin Luther King, show in different ways how peaceful change for the better can be accomplished through courage and persistence.
Please read the instructions below before clicking on the View File button to download the Social Justice Packet No. 7.
Instructions for Using the Packets
Each Activity Packet addresses an aspect of the “Big Idea” that the collection addresses, (e.g. the Universal themes of Traditional Literature, Social Justice, or Interconnectness, etc.) It starts with a focus concept, such as “Needs, Wants, and Gratitude”, or “Helping Others”, followed by an overview explanation of the topic and an explanation of the target learners.
The next section, in the box, titled “What developmental Reading Behaviors Are Emphasized?” comes from our book, Reading Development: A Handbook of Assessment and Instruction in which we lay out a birth-to-maturity continuum of reading behaviors that research and experience have shown us learners go through as they grow as readers. In this section we name the Engagement, Comprehension, and Language-to-Print behaviors the Activity Packet will address. If the teacher is looking for additional activities to support one of these behaviors, they can easily be found in the Handbook.
Following this are the books and materials needed to carry out the activities.
Next come two or more activities that support the exploration of the content of the reading material such that the learners gain a further understanding of an aspect of the “Big Idea” as well as learning about literary features such as character development, plot, foreshadowing, etc., and specific aspects of how print works to represent language, such as phonological awareness, spelling conventions, grammatical features, etc.
Next we offer a sampling of the Common Core Standards the Activity Packet addresses for those who wish to assure that they are meeting government recommended learning goals.
If other standards are relevant, we will include them. For instance, to Social Justice packets, we add Social Justice Standards, taken from www.learningforjustice.org.
Currently Packet Samples are from the following books:
Phinney, M.Y. & Ward, G.C. (2020). Traditional Tales: 30 Activities for Differentiated Instruction. Seattle, WA: Amazon.
Phinney, M.Y. & Ward, G.C. (2021). Interconnectedness: Connecting to Self, Others, Nature and Society. Seattle, WA: Amazon.
Ward, G.C. & Phinney, M.Y. (2023). 36 Sets of Classroom Activities Using Social Justice Literature for Differentiated Instruction. Seattle, WA: Amazon.