In this activity for early grades, students will read a short biography of César Chávez, be introduced to labor unions and reflect on how powerful it can be to speak up, with others, for change.
Objectives:
Framework:
In our schools and in our culture more broadly, we often teach young people how important it is to stand up for ourselves. Too often, however, we focus such lessons on the power of an individual's voice — even an individual child standing alone who somehow finds a way to stand up to the big, scary bully. We often forget to communicate to children how powerful it can be to stand up with others and speak out against unfairness or injustice.
In this lesson, students will learn about César Chávez, one of our nation's greatest labor leaders, but they also will examine how the successes attributed to Chavez were actually the result of efforts from thousands of other people, too.
Materials:
Procedures:
Open the lesson by asking students to think of a time when they encountered a problem or challenge. Would it have been helpful to have other kids (or adults) speak out with them to help solve the problem? Ask students to do a quick free-write about their experience.
Allow students time, as homework or in class, individually or in small groups, to read an excerpt of the Biographical Sketch of César E. Chávez [1]. Provide students or groups with copies of Scholastic's Problem and Solution Diagram [2] (PDF) to support reading comprehension: What was the problem Chávez was trying to solve? How did he — and others — try to address that problem? How did things turn out?
As a class, discuss:
Ask students to pull out their free-writes from the opening of the activity. Prompt student volunteers to share entries that relate to issues or problems that happened in your school. As a class, talk about how you can work with each other, join together as a group like the farmworkers and their allies, and make change happen in your school. Take action on those ideas.
Standards
This lesson meets standards [3] in K-4 historical understanding [4] and language arts [5].
Links:
[1] http://chavez.cde.ca.gov/ModelCurriculum/Teachers/Lessons/Resources/Biographies/Biographical_Sketch_4thGrd.aspx
[2] http://printables.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/00/ORG00_017.pdf
[3] http://www.tolerance.org/teach/activities/activity.jsp?ar=1058
[4] http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/reference.asp?item=benchmark&BenchmarkID=243&subjectID=4
[5] http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/standardDetails.asp?subjectID=7&standardID=6