Primary Source Exemplar: Progress, Conflict, and Outcomes

Reviewed and Revised by Odell Education

Unit Abstract

This unit is centered around an anchor text that may be common among content area teachers in a high school setting.  Although this unit may be incorporated into any high-school English class, it is aligned with Common Core standards for 9-10. This unit will primarily focus on informational and argumentative texts, and can be used to incorporate more informational texts (as directed by the Common Core) into English classrooms at the high school level.  This unit is best suited to a collaborative model of development in which ELA and content area teachers share an anchor text (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and communicate about how to connect diverse skills to common texts and essential questions.  

Source List


Anchor Source

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Secondary Anchor Source

Child Malnutrition: Global Health Observatory Data Repository

Supporting Sources

Our rights (poem): F. Spagnoli

Food Deserts in Chicago: A Report of the Illinois Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights

“Studies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity.”

The World Food Crisis: An Overview of the Causes and Consequences

Standards Alignment


ELA/Literacy Grade Level Standards

Each lesson is aligned separately. 


Developing Student Literacy


CCSS Areas of Focus

Reading Text Closely: Makes reading text(s) closely, examining textual evidence, and discerning deep meaning a central focus of instruction.

Explanation:  

Text ­Based Evidence: Facilitates rich and rigorous evidence­ based discussions and writing about common texts through a sequence of specific, thought­ provoking, and text­ dependent questions (including, when applicable, questions about illustrations, charts, diagrams, audio/video, and media).

Explanation: 

Writing from Sources: Routinely expects that students draw evidence from texts to produce clear and coherent writing that informs, explains, or makes an argument in various written forms (e.g., notes, summaries, short responses, or formal essays).

Explanation: 

Academic Vocabulary: Focuses on building students’ academic vocabulary in context throughout instruction.

Explanation: 


Direct Learning Through Questions


Essential Questions

What are human rights? 

How do competing notions of human rights lead to conflict or change?

Supporting Questions

What are the unintended consequences of progress?  

How do advances in one area contribute to problems in another? 

Does the United States uphold the conditions of this declaration for all people?


Align Assessment with Instruction


Suggested Summative Assessments

Students will compare and synthesize ideas across texts, and write an essay in which they will create an argument based on the information and data from the anchor and auxiliary texts.


Suggested Formative Assessment Strategies

Formative Assessments will include written journal entries prompted by questions tied to the texts and essential questions, formalized, peer-directed discussions, reading assessments which focus on critical thinking and written expression of ideas.  Writing skills, Vocabulary, and Speaking and Listening will be folded into the unit so that skills are integrated and students are able to build skills in these areas while focusing on a common theme and essential question.   

Consider Background Knowledge and Prerequisite Skills


Essential Concepts

In this unit, students will use primary and secondary sources to compare and synthesize information across texts in order to answer the essential questions of the unit by creating their own arguments.  Students will demonstrate their understandings in a written essay that will be assigned at the end of this unit, which will focus specifically on making an argument regarding the question of whether the United States upholds article 25 of the UDHR for all of its citizens.  Students will begin this sequence of documents with a data set from the WHO Child Malnutrition Database. Each successive document will offer information and arguments that may be used to provide evidence for student claims in the culminating written assignment.  In order for students to analyze varying perspectives, and evaluate claims, the texts represented in this unit represent multiple points of view on this topic.  

Note: the texts included in this unit express opinions and arguments that are by no means definitive.  These texts were chosen because they provide a rich context from which students may derive information and opinions to support their own writing.  The focus of this unit is not to conduct an exhaustive amount of research to answer the central questions definitively, but rather to develop the student skills of close reading of complex informational texts, writing to sources and making claims substantiated by evidence.  

Essential Skills

Students will make inferences and draw conclusions based on the information, data, and arguments made in each of the texts, beginning with the Declaration of Human Rights and the Data Set on Child Malnutrition.

Students will correlate their findings regarding obesity and malnourishment to the 25th article of the universal declaration of human rights.  In what countries is this fulfilled, etc…?

Students will delineate and evaluate arguments presented by writers of informative and argumentative texts regarding under and over-nourishment in the US and worldwide.

Students will discuss, deliberate, argue, and create products that display their level of knowledge and skill.  


Provide Support While Building Toward Independence


Strategies for Supporting All Students and Building Independence

Details within each lesson

Additional Suggestions for Support/Extension

Details within each lesson


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