Students consider the meaning of justice, the importance of bearing witness to acts of injustice, and whether bearing witness can be a form of justice. They read the accessible but sophisticated novel Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes, as well as the compelling nonfiction text The Murder of Emmett Till. Students learn the partner fluency routine that will carry them through all three units and begin to practice strategies for recognizing base words. Reciprocal Teaching strategies, specifically clarifying and summarizing, are introduced as a framework for comprehension. 

LITERATURE

Ghost Boys (Jewell Parker Rhodes) – Engaging magical realist text about a young African American boy who is shot by a White police officer in modern-day Chicago. His ghost meets the ghost of Emmett Till, to explore themes of race-based violence, justice and bearing witness.

The Murder of Emmett Till (Henrietta Toth) – This accessible nonfiction text provides background knowledge on Emmett Till’s life and murder and the aftermath of his death. 

FLUENCY TOPICS

Trayvon Martin, Jim Crow, the KKK, Civil Rights, Tamir Rice, the South Side of Chicago, Peter Pan, polio, the Negro Leagues, anti-Semitism, Day of the Dead, Thurgood Marshall 

FOCUS

Literary analysis

• Interrelation of character, plot and setting
• Comparing and contrasting a fictional portrayal and a historical account of the same event

Reading comprehension

• Summarizing and clarifying as components of Reciprocal Teaching
• Using 5 Ws (who, did what, when, etc.) as a scaffold for summarizing
• Using and citing evidence from a text 

Decoding 

• Identifying base words and chunking compound words 
• Recognizing and chunking words with a base plus a prefix or suffix 

Debate 

• What could bring justice for Jerome?