What?
Students create “trading cards” spotlighting diverse community members who work toward social justice goals that connect to themes from the central text.
Estimated time
One week
Why?
This task builds awareness of individuals in students’ communities who promote fairness and inclusion. Learning about real people encourages students to think about their own power as change agents. This task also helps build bridges between the community and educational settings.
How?
Get Ready
- Brainstorm a list of diverse community members who engage in positive work and make important contributions. Consider approaching:
- Family members and friends
- School community members
- Other community members
- Arrange for community members to visit, call or Skype the classroom so students can conduct interviews about their social justice work during school time.
- Adapt the sample rubric into a visual checklist. Refer to the rubric to define expectations and components of community spotlight trading cards before students begin working.
Get Set
- Verbally introduce students to the preparatory steps included in the Do Something Planning Guide. Instruct them in the process of mapping the steps necessary to prepare for their trading cards.
- Explore examples of positive community contributions with students.
- Coach students on how to ask questions so interviewees are prompted to share relevant facts or “statistics” and pertinent information. For very young children, facilitate the interviews with a group of children. Facts should include:
- What they do
- Who they work with
- The purpose of their work
- Give students time to plan their cards. Prompt them to draw portraits of their community members and record statistics about them on the card.
Go!
- Have students share their “trading cards” with the whole class. Student can switch cards with a classmate, read it, then “trade” it to a different person.
Reflection
Facilitate a class discussion during which students:
- Reflect further on how the contributions of community members connect to central text themes;
- Share why different community leaders’ positive contributions are important;
- Connect work of community leaders to important issues that impact community.
English language learners
This task offers an assessment option that balances art and writing in a way that is both creative and visually appealing. Graphic organizers, planning sheets and sentence starters can assist with the linguistic component of the task. The task focuses on spatial/artistic, linguistic and interpersonal learning modalities.
Connection to anti-bias education
Identifying community members engaged in social justice work allows students to forge strong connections between their learning and positive social action, in and out of the classroom.
