Content Objectives

Problem Statement

This is my fourteenth-year teaching seventh grade English/Language Arts at Greenberg Elementary School. Greenberg is a K-8 school within the school district of Philadelphia. However, it is located in a very suburban looking area, only two blocks from the boarder with Montgomery County. Greenberg’s enrollment is 831 students. Of these students, 648 live in the school’s catchment area. The ethnic makeup of students is 41% white, 39% Asian, 12% Black/African American, 8% Hispanic/Latino, and 1% Multi Racial/Other. This is a small but significant shift from when I first started recording this data in the 2018-19 year. The ethnic makeup of students in that year was 48% White, 27% Asian, 11% Black/African American, 8% Hispanic/Latino, 5% Multi Racial/Other. Seventeen percent of our students our classified as English Language Learners. This has almost doubled in the last four years (9% in 2019-2020). The most spoken languages other than English at Greenberg, from greatest to least, are Mandarin, Uzbek, Russian, Arabic, Malayalam, Ukrainian, and Cantonese. This has changed from 2018-19, when the languages from greatest to least were Malayalam, Uzbek, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, and Ukrainian. Finally, the rate of economically disadvantaged has increased from 44% in the 2019-2020 school year to 68% this year (School District of Philadelphia 2018 & School District of Philadelphia 2023).

There seems to be a shift happening in the Pine Valley neighborhood (the neighborhood of Greenberg). When I arrived at the school, it seemed 80% of the school population was evenly split between white students born in the United States and Malayali students (immigrants or the children of immigrants from Kerala, India’s southernmost state). There were even more white, U.S. born families in neighborhood that did not have elementary age kids or sent their children to Catholic or charter schools. The secretaries told me in August that many houses in the neighborhood have been up for sale. The families moving in are even more linguistically and ethnically diverse than previously and have more elementary age children. Thinking about this shift made me wonder about previous demographic shifts. When I arrived at Greenberg, staff that had been at the school since it opened in 1966 or went to the school, told me that the school and neighborhood had almost a completely white, Jewish, U.S. born population in the beginning. When did that change and how did that change? How many noticeable shifts have there been in population since the opening of Greenberg?

The diversity in my school also brings many differing experiences, of and differing views of, the city of Philadelphia and their neighborhood’s context in it. It also brings some confusion. Discussions with students have revealed that many students do not understand how big Philadelphia is or where they are located within it. Since we are so close to the suburbs, some are not even sure if they live in the city or not. Some students go into center city for entertainment frequently, while others have only been to center city for school trips. Some students go to other parts of the city to visit family. Other students do not have a reason to go to any other part of Philadelphia, but travel to cities in other parts of the U.S. or the world to visit family. While most students do not know much about the city they live in, some have strong opinions (often negative) about Philadelphia. That saddens me. I assume these opinions are shaped by the rhetoric of the adults in the students’ lives. I believe being an informed an engaged citizen means forming knowledge and experience-based opinions on the communities and societies in which we live in all levels, school, neighborhood, region, city, state, country, and world.  Students affect and are affected by these communities. Exploring, learning about, and discussing these communities will have students develop their identities as maturing young adults.

Rational

When I began reading The Philadelphia Negro for my Teacher Institute of Philadelphia (TIP) seminar, discussing it with my colleagues in the seminar, and delving into Professor Hiller’s Philadelphia GeoHistory Project, these questions surrounding Pine Valley grew more and more. I knew right away that the way I wanted to relate The Philadelphia Negro to my students was to relate it to the schools’ neighborhood. For many middle schoolers, their neighborhood is still their world (Du Bois,1899).

The unit will be focused on telling the story of Greenberg’s neighborhood. I will relate this to the novel The House on Mango Street, which is part of the new seventh grade ELA curriculum that I am teaching for the first time this year. The House on Mango Street is a short novel of poetic vignettes, written by Sandra Cisneros. Each chapter is a tiny story, mostly observations of the narrator, Esperanza. As Esperanza grows from a child to young woman, she shares her observations of her neighborhood’s people, inhabitants, and events. The House on Mango Street is based on Cisneros’ experiences growing up in Humboldt Park, Chicago, in the 1970s. Esperanza’s Mango Street has many similarities to our Pine Valley. It is a lower middle-class neighborhood in a big city. It is also, what I call, reverse gentrifying. White people are moving out, while immigrant families are moving in. The families are younger and larger than those leaving. The new families are happy to be in a safer, less city-like part of the city. However, this is not the dream house they want to end up in. They dream of a big house in the safe suburbs (Cisneros, 1984).

Unit Outline

While reading The House on Mango Street, I will introduce the idea to students that the narrator is telling the story of her neighborhood to the readers through this book. We will deduce through discussion that this story is told about a particular time and place through its people, places, and events. The narrator collects her information through observation and informal conversation. Then I will introduce that almost one hundred and fifty years ago another person wrote a book to tell the story of a neighborhood in Philadelphia. He was not primarily a writer. He was a sociologist, and he collected his information and told his story in a very different way. This sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois, researched and wrote The Philadelphia Negro in the 1890s about the 7^th Ward, a neighborhood in South Philadelphia (Cisneros, 1984)(Du Bois, 1899).

Students will learn about Du Bois and his study through two videos. The first one is PBS  History Detectives, a five-minute clip about Du Bois and The Philadelphia Negro, hosted by Dr. Tukufu Zuberi. The second one is Dr. Amy Hiller’s eighteen-minute documentary A Legacy of Courage: W.E.B. Du Bois and The Philadelphia Negro. As students watch, they will fill out guided note taking sheets, which will help them pick out and remember the information most important to our exploration (Hiller, 2001, PBS, 2009)

I want students to compare and contrast The Philadelphia Negro to The House on Mango Street and to then use both of these books as a model for their own research of the Greenberg Neighborhood. However, The Philadelphia Negro is at too high a level for my students to read. Instead, we will explore the book through some of its visual aspects. I will reproduce the table of contents of The Philadelphia Negro, as well as the maps, some key data visualization tables, and Du Bois’s interview schedule. For each of these “texts” we will do a close reading, where we look closely at them observing and discussing all the parts in order to draw conclusions about the work that DuBois did, what he found, and how he presented his findings (Cisneros, 1984; Du Bois, 1899).

Then we will make two Venn diagrams in order to conceptualize the differences between the two books. One diagram will be the similarities and differences between the two neighborhoods, Mango Street in Chicago in the 1970s and the 7^th Ward in Philadelphia in the 1890s. The other will be the similarities and differences between how Cisneros and Dubois collected and presented their data in their books. It might take some discussion to help students realize that Cisneros’ vignettes are a form of data about a neighborhood. Here I will introduce the terms quantitative and qualitive data. We will discuss how Dubois collected much more quantitative data and we will think about why and how he did that. Then we will discuss how Cisneros collected qualitative data and presented it through creative writing, but that artistic expression is a valid way to present and interpret data. This could lead us to looking at photographs of the seventh ward as qualitative data and artistic expression. We will do a close reading of photographs from the seventh ward to see what stories they tell and how they relate to the texts we looked at from The Philadelphia Negro (Jenks, 1888-1911).

From here, I will introduce the idea of telling the story of the Greenberg neighborhood. I will ask, “How could we add the Greenberg Neighborhood, Philadelphia in 2023, to our Venn Diagrams to make it a three-way Venn Diagram? What information would we collect and how?” Data collection activities that I would encourage and help implement include surveying, interviewing, looking at maps, and walking the neighborhood in order to write down observations and take photographs. I would also encourage the students to think of their own data collection methods. To develop ideas about the kind of information we want to find out, we could look back at the table of contents of The Philadelphia Negro to see the different kinds of information Du Bois collected such as age, family size, ethnicity, time lived in house or city, where people migrated from, education, employment, religious affiliation, businesses, religious centers, civic organizations, how many people live in a house, and crime. Then I would help them make plans on how to implement their data collection strategies, perhaps in small groups, each doing a different strategy.

For surveying and interviewing, we would look back at DuBois’s interview schedule. At this stage, I would ask students how they would translate these questions into a modern survey of people living in this neighborhood. Once we have come up these questions, each student will have to interview at least one person in the neighborhood and write down their answers to the questions. I will encourage most students to interview a parent. For students who do not live in the neighborhood of the school, I will find them a staff member who lives in the neighborhood or a parent of a student in another grade to interview. ­

To introduce the idea of neighborhood change, the class will do a close read of six photographs taken during the groundbreaking and construction of Greenberg in 1964 and 1965 that are currently hanging in the school lobby. Students will be able to see that, at the time the school was built, not all the houses in the neighborhood were built yet. They can also see the people, their dress, and their cars are different than what you would see today. I hope this will lead us into a conversation of what different changes time brings to a neighborhood. We will then go back and reexamine The Philadelphia Negro and The House on Mango Street to infer what changes were occurring in those neighborhoods and how they were documented.

Two ways we can see how the Greenberg neighborhood has changed is comparing maps and comparing photographs. We can use the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network map to compare Pine Valley in 1942 to 1962 and to today. Students will be able to see that in 1942 almost all of Pine Valley was just one farm. By 1962 it had been broken up into subdevelopments with roads, but many of the houses present today were not yet built. Students could draw portions of these maps to take with them on our neighborhood walk. They could also compare the photographs of 1964 and 1965 to the 1964 map (Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network).

We will then take our photographs and maps with us on a community walk to experience the places in the photographs and maps in real life. We can take pictures of the same places that were in the 1964 and 1965 photos to later compare. I also want students to each focus on one specific aspect of the neighborhood to observe and record in notes, in order to make a map of later, similar to Du Bois’s map. Examples of aspects to map could be houses with trees, pools, trampolines, or signs, or single-family houses verses duplexes, or types of siding on houses.

After all our different forms of data collection are over, students would pick several different ways to present their data in our book. Our book is tentatively titled The School on Sharon Lane, but I think I might have students suggest a name and vote on it.

For the book, I want students to write at least three different vignettes in the style of House on Mango Street and pick their favorite to put in the book so that each student has an individual writing piece in the book. One idea for a vignette is for students to pick one of the people in the photograph from the school’s ground breaking in 1964 and write an account of the day from their point of view. A second idea for a vignette is for the students to use the information from their interview of someone who lives in the neighborhood and write a narrative about them. The third idea for a vignette is for students to write a descriptive piece of a small part of the neighborhood from the notes they took on the walk. The final idea I have for a vignette is for students to write a narrative of an experience they have had in the neighborhood. There are different vignettes in The House on Mango Street that we can use as mentor texts for all these different vignettes.

Students will also work in groups to make a map of some aspect of the neighborhood, which they would have begun to research on our neighborhood walk. The maps would be color coded and use Du Bois’ map of the seventh ward as a model. Student groups will also take the data from the interviews to make a data visualization. Each group will make a data visualization of one question that was asked to all participants, such as time lived in the neighborhood or number of people living in the house. Students will use the data visualizations from The Philadelphia Negro that we studied at the beginning of the unit as models in order to make a clear and creative data visualization of their survey information. Each group will also write short paragraphs explaining their map and their data visualization.

We will also include the photographs of the school from 1964/65 and today and written analysis. We would either write this all together as a class or give each group a different photograph to write about. In each analysis they will include comparison and contrast, as well as what changed and why they think it changed. There also may be other ways students want to present data that I have not thought of that will definitely be included in the book, as I am a very firm believer in students taking a lead in their learning and assessment.

Once we have completed all the texts for the book, I will bind the book together using a book binding machine I previously purchased for my classroom. For years, I have taken the good copies of students’ writing pieces and bound them into class books that live in my class library. These books are to show students that their writing is much more important than just a grade, that it is real writing that other students will want to read. I also always have a publishing party or celebration of writing when students finish a published writing piece. However, I feel the need to do something bigger for this book completion. This book is not only a work of literature, it is a written record of historic, sociological, and geographic importance. I think I would make at least three copies of the book, giving one to the principal, one to the local library, and putting one in my classroom library (our school no longer has a school library). I would also like to have a larger celebration of writing/publishing party where students share their work with not just their peers, but other grades, parents, and possibly community members or community groups such as the Northeast Philadelphia History Network.

Essential Questions

• What can we learn about this neighborhood and how can we learn it?
• What stories does this neighborhood have to tell?
• How and why has this neighborhood changed since Greenberg was built?
• How has the school changed the neighborhood?

Major Unit Objectives

Students will be able to comprehend and analyze information in different forms of texts such as fictional narrative, documentary film, maps, and infographics in order to infer and draw conclusions about neighborhoods and neighborhood study.

Students will be able to collect a variety of information in a variety of different forms in order to interpret, synthesize, and draw conclusions about the data.

Students will be able to present the summaries and interpretations of their data in a variety of forms in order to be able to teach others what they have discovered about their neighborhood.

Standards

Common Core Standards for English Language Arts

Reading Literature

RL.7.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Reading Informational Text

RI.7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

RI.7.3 Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).

Writing

W7.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

W7.3 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

W7.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.

Speaking and Listening

SL7.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

SL7.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.

Learning for Justice (Formerly Teaching Tolerance) Social Justice Standards

Diversity 6 – DI.6-8.6 – I interact with people who are similar to and different from me, and I show respect to all people.

Diversity 8 – DI.6-8.8 – I am curious and want to know more about other people’s histories and lived experiences, and I ask questions respectfully and listen carefully and non-judgmentally.

Vignettes: Students will write vignettes in the style of The House on Mango Street. A vignette is a short passage that uses imagery to describe a short event, a person, or a place.

Guided Notes: Guided notes will be used to help students understand and remember key information from the video we watch. Guided notes are teacher created handouts that outline videos, lectures, podcasts, or readings with blanks for key concepts. It promotes active engagement during what can usually be a passive process. It also provides students with full and accurate notes to look back at and helps students identify the most important information covered.

Mentor Texts: Mentor texts are texts for writing students to reread, study, find inspiration from, and sometimes imitate. They help students take risks to try new techniques and learn how to do something they may not yet be able to do on their own.

Close Reading:

The Prospect Center’s close reading process goes as follows:

1. A group of six to eight participants sit in a circle. There is a notetaker and a chair.
2. Participants give their first impressions of the text based on a quick read through. The chair gives a summary of the main themes of the first impressions.
3. The chair asks someone to read the passage aloud. A second person can also be asked to read the passage aloud so that it is heard in more than one voice.
4. The chair asks someone to start a line-by-line reading and description. – After reading a line, the reader might make an observation about the structure of the sentence say what stands out to them about the word choice, or say what a particular word makes them think of.
5. The participants continue going line by line through the text until the text is finished. If the text is short, and the group larger, the group may go through the text multiple times.
6. The chair gives a summary of the main themes that came out during the line by line description.
7. There may be another discussion of the text as a whole followed by another summary from the chair.

“Close reading is slow, intensive work.” It is a specific process of a group of educators reading through and discussing a text (usually a student’s work) multiple times. The first time is straight through for first impressions. Then the group reads line by line, commenting on the meaning behind almost every word (Strieb, 2012, p. 61-63).

Close reading can also be done with visual images. I did this in a school district training on the new close reading for teachers of English Language Learners. It started with people sharing details of what they see, down to every little detail. Only then do participants share what they are inferring based on what they see. I often do shortened versions of this with students to introduce a topic we will be reading about. It helps students learn that all “seeing” is inferring and involves some background knowledge, bias, and assumptions.

Gallery Walk of Photographs: Gallery walk is a practice where texts (including writing pieces of any kind, artwork of any kind, or even brainstorming lists) are placed on the walls around the room. Students (usually in groups) take time “reading”, engaging with, and reflecting on the text, often aided by guiding questions. Students are often asked to write down their reflections either at each station (on sticky notes or chart paper) or on a  paper they are carrying with them. I plan to use this technique to help students engage with photographs of the 7^th ward and the Greenberg Neighborhood.

Neighborhood Walk: The class will walk around a few block area, slowly, and try to just observe details they have not seen before without judgement. Students should say what they are seeing to each other and record what they are seeing in photographs and note-taking. Students should use their recordings to later reflect on and draw conclusions about what they saw.

Journal Entries: Students respond to a daily journal prompt during the first ten minutes of class. The prompt is often a question to access prior knowledge about the topic of the upcoming lesson and a question to get students to reflect on the ongoing unit. I often use the journal entry as thinking of a think-pair-share (described below). I collect, read, and respond to students’ journals once a week.

Celebration of Writing/Publishing Party: This is an idea I took from Lucy Calkins’ Writer’s Workshop. The point is for students to feel a sense of accomplishment in a finished piece of writing, to feel that they are writers who just published a piece, not just students who completed an assignment. A quick search will give you many different ways teachers conduct their Celebration of Writings. Since many middle schoolers are shy about reading their work out loud to the entire class, I usually have students share their work in small groups of their choosing. Students fill out compliment cards for each other and I give out small treats. Later, I use a book binding machine to make a book out of the classes’ work.

Discussion: Different types of discussion models used include whole group discussion, turn and talk, and think/write-pair-share. Turn and talk is when a teacher poses an open-ended question for students to discuss with an assigned partner sitting close to them. Think/write-pair-share is when students think or write independently about a question or topic. Then students engage in discussion with a partner about the question or topic. Finally, students can volunteer to share out in a whole class discussion.

Graphic organizers: This unit uses several teacher-made graphic organizers to scaffold students’ learning and achieve the content objective. Graphic organizers are papers given out to students to write on that already have visuals to show relationships between facts, terms, and ideas.

Compare and contrast Venn diagram: Students will use a Venn-diagram graphic organizer to compare and contrast. A Venn-diagram uses overlapping circles, or other shapes, to create three or more sections. The middle section is where students put characteristics that are similar between the items being compared. In the two outer sections, students write the characteristics that are specific only to each of the two different items.

Cooperative Learning: Cooperative learning is a form of scaffolding where students work in groups on specific tasks. Each member has the responsibility to learn and accomplish individually while also having the responsibility of group success. Cooperative learning aids students in practicing communication skills, problem solving, and critical thinking.

Group Reflection and Self-Assessment: These are valuable learning tools for both the students and the teacher that should be done during and at the end of the unit. During the unit, I dedicate some of the class’s daily journal entry topics to answering reflective questions about what they are reading, thinking, and learning. This helps both me and the students have a clearer picture of their progress and needs. At the end of a unit, I give students a teacher-made “Group Reflection/Self-Assessment” report to rate and explain their achievement, effort, organization, and teamwork. I use this as a small part of their grade.

Modeled Writing: Modeled writing is a scaffold that helps students move toward writing independently using targeted skills. The students watch and listen while the teacher creates a written piece in front of them, sharing her thinking and decision-making process aloud.

Gradual Release of Responsibility Model (Gradual Release): Gradual Release is a style of teaching in which activity moves slowly from being completely teacher centered to completely student centered as students become more confident and competent at the task. The lesson usually starts with the teacher modeling a task. Then the teacher models, but gets help from the class as a whole. Then, the students do the task in groups, with the teacher circulating to help those who are struggling. Finally, the students complete the task independently.

Interviewing: Interviews entail students developing questions to ask an interviewee. Then they must select and get permission from someone to ask the questions to. Then, they ask the questions of the interviewee in person, over the phone, or over Zoom, and record the results. Finally, students compile, interpret and draw conclusions on the results.

Surveying: Surveys entail students, deciding on a population the ask questions to. Then students develop questions to ask the population and decide how they will deliver the survey to their survey population (e.g., on paper through the mail or electronically through email). Then students distribute the survey to the population. When results come in, students compile, interpret and draw conclusions on the results.

Lesson 2:  Exploring the seventh ward

Time: 45-60 Minutes

Materials:

1. A document camera
2. An overhead projector
3. Student journals

4. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s map of the seventh ward in his book, The Philadelphia Negro” graphic organizer for each student (Appendix A)
5. At least one color printout of entire seventh ward map to hang on classroom wall

Objective:

Students will be able to comprehend and analyze information in different primary sources from The Philadelphia Negro in order to infer and draw conclusions about Du Bois, his study, and the seventh ward.

Standards:

• 7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• 1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• 2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
• Diversity 8 – DI.6-8.8 – I am curious and want to know more about other people’s histories and lived experiences, and I ask questions respectfully and listen carefully and non-judgmentally

Procedure:

Introduction/Accessing background knowledge:

Have this journal entry on the board when students come in:

Remember the videos we watched yesterday about W.E.B. Du Bois and his study of the 7^th ward in Philadelphia. What do you remember about Du Bois, the neighborhood, and his book about the neighborhood?

Students have ten minutes to write in their journal.

Students pair-share their journal.

As students share out, make a list of important details of what Du Bois discovered, and how he discovered, it on the board.

Lesson:

Seventh Ward Map

Link information students gave to Du Bois’ map.

Put the full map of the seventh ward on the wall.

Give each student a copy of “W.E.B Du Bois’s map of the seventh ward in his book, The Philadelphia Negro” graphic organizer.

Have students stand around the map and do a close reading of the map as a class.

Write students’ comments on the board.

Based on the close reading, have students fill out the top part of the graphic organizer that asks them what they notice and wonder about the map.

Students pair-share what they wrote.

Have students discuss the next graphic on their graphic organizer, the map key, in small groups and then fill out the chart below the key in their groups.

Have someone from each group share to the whole class.

Conclusion

Ask students how and why they think Du Bois made these classifications.

Link the seventh ward map to Du Bois’ interview schedule. Preview next lesson.

Ask students these questions as a closing:

Could you categorize households like this today?

What would be the purpose of categorizing people like this?

Is it accurate or discriminatory?

Collect graphic organizer as a formative assessment.

Lesson 3:  Exploring Du Bois’ Interview

Time: 60-90 Minutes

Materials:

1. A document camera
2. An overhead projector
3. Student journals

4. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s map of the seventh ward in his book, The Philadelphia Negro” graphic organizer for each student (Appendix A)
5. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s interview schedules for seventh ward” graphic organizer for each student (Appendix A)
6. At least one color printout of entire seventh ward map to hang on classroom wall

Objective:

Students will be able to comprehend and analyze information in different primary sources from The Philadelphia Negro in order to infer and draw conclusions about Du Bois, his study, and the seventh ward.

Standards:

• 7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• 1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 7 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• 2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
• Diversity 8 – DI.6-8.8 – I am curious and want to know more about other people’s histories and lived experiences, and I ask questions respectfully and listen carefully and non-judgmentally.

Procedure:

Introduction/Accessing background knowledge:

Have this journal entry on the board when students come in:

Look back to your W.E.B Du Bois’s map of the seventh ward graphic organizer. Look back at the four categories Du Bois put households into. How do you think Du Bois came up with those categories? What information would he have to have to put people into those categories? What questions do you think he asked to get that information?

Students have ten minutes to write in their journal.

Students pair-share their journal.

Lesson:

Individual Interview Schedule

Link information students gave to Du Bois’ interview schedule. Talk about the different meaning of schedule and what it means in this context.

Give each student a copy of “W.E.B Du Bois’s interview schedules for seventh ward” graphic organizer.

Have students fill out the graphic organizer about the Individual Interview Schedule through gradual release.

Have a short class discussion to talk about the reflection questions.

Home Interview Schedule

Discuss the difference between the home interview and individual interview and why Du Bois would make these two separate interviews.

Have students fill out the graphic organizer about the Home Interview Schedule

through gradual release.

Have a short class discussion to talk about the reflection questions.

Conclusion:

Go back to the reflection questions about what questions an interviewer would ask today.

Introduce the idea of doing a study about the Greenberg neighborhood. Ask students to think about who we should interview and what we should ask them.

Collect graphic organizer as a formative assessment.

Lesson 5:  Comparing The Philadelphia Negro to The House on Mango Street

Time: 60 Minutes

Materials:

1. A document camera
2. An overhead projector
3. Student journals

4. Neighborhood Compare and Contrast Venn-diagram and Book Compare and Contrast Venn-diagram double-sided handout for each student (Appendix A)
5. At least on color print out of entire seventh ward map to hang on classroom wall

Objective:

Students will be able to compare and contrast information already analyzed in order to draw conclusions.

Standards:

• 7.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• 2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
• Diversity 8 – DI.6-8.8 – I am curious and want to know more about other people’s histories and lived experiences, and I ask questions respectfully and listen carefully and non-judgmentally.

Procedure:

Introduction/Accessing background knowledge:

Have this journal entry on the board when students come in:

What did you learn about the 7^th Ward in Philadelphia in the 1890s by looking at the data visualizations (charts) yesterday? Why do you think Du Bois included these in his book?

Students have ten minutes to write in their journal.

Students pair-share their journal.

Lesson:

Introduce the idea that Du Bois was studying the people and places of a neighborhood during a particular time. Then he wrote a book about what he found. Sandra Cisneros also wrote a book about the people and places of a neighborhood during a particular time. There were similarities and differences in these two neighborhoods.

Hand out the Venn-diagram sheets.

Fill out the neighborhood compare and contrast as a whole class, getting information from the students. Encourage them to look back at their notes from the last few days of lessons on the 7^th ward and from their notes from reading The House on Mango Street.

Tell students to look at the book compare and contrast Venn-diagram on the back of their papers.

Ask students why the two books are so different. Pass around a copy of The Philadelphia Negro for students to flip through and have copies of The House on Mango Street for students to look back at.

Introduce or review (they may have learned in another class) the terms qualitative and quantitative data. Have students copy the definitions in their journals.

Quantitative: measuring the amount or number is something

Qualitative: measuring the quality, kind or characteristics of something, instead of the amount of something

Discuss which type of information each author primarily used.

Fill out the book Venn-diagram together as a class.

Ask student to infer why they think these books were so different.

Conclusion:

Project a picture of the neighborhood compare and contrast Venn-diagram with a third circle for Greenberg.

Ask students what they would put in this Venn-diagram.

What similarities does the Greenberg neighborhood of today have to either of these two neighborhoods?

Do we even know enough information to fill this out? What information are we missing? How would we get it?

Project a picture of the book compare and contrast Venn-diagram with a third circle for Greenberg.

Introduce the project – doing a study of the Greenberg neighborhood and writing a book about it.

What information would you want to find out? How?

What kind of book should we make? Why?

Collect Venn-diagrams as a formative assessment.

Cisneros, S. (1984) The House on Mango Street. New York: Vintage Contemporaries.

This novel contains many vignettes that contain observations of a neighborhood and its people in the midst of change. It is part of 7^th grade ELA curriculum for the School District of Philadelphia. I will connect my unit to The House on Mango Street Unit.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro; a social study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Du Bois’ study and resulting book was the basis of The Teacher Institute of Philadelphia (TIP) seminar I participated in that led to this unit. Students will analyze small parts of this book to better understand Du Bois’ study of the seventh ward.

“Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network” Retrieved

from http://www.philageohistory.org/tiles/viewer/

This website overlays historic maps of Philadelphia on a current Google map of Philadelphia. Students will look at the Pine Valley section of the map to compare the 1942 and 1962 maps to today.

Hiller, Amy, Du Bois Investigation. PowerPoint Presentation.

This PowerPoint contains primary source documents about W.E.B Du Bois, his study, the seventh ward, and The Philadelphia Negro. Students will do close readings of some of these documents to better understand Du Bois’ study and book.

Hiller, Amy. (2001) A Legacy of Courage: W.E.B. Du Bois and The Philadelphia Negro

[Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/22239485

This short documentary introduces The Philadelphia Negro, the historic seventh ward and the study’s historic significance to a wider Philadelphia audience. Students will watch this video in the beginning of the unit in order to be introduced to Du Bois’ study of the seventh ward.

Hiller, Amy, Susan Warton W.E.B. Du Bois. PowerPoint Presentation.

This PowerPoint contains primary source documents about W.E.B. Du Bois, his study, the seventh ward, and The Philadelphia Negro. Students will do close readings of some of these documents to better understand Du Bois’ study and book.

History Detectives: Tour with Tukufu Zuberi performance by Tukufu Zuberi, Lion

Broadcasting, 2009. PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/history-detectives-tour-with-tukufu-zuberi/.

This short video introduces Du Bois, his study, and his book to younger audiences. Students will watch this video in beginning of the unit in order to be introduced to Du Bois’ study of the seventh ward.

Hunter, M. A. (2013) A bridge over troubled urban waters: W. E. B. Du Bois’s The

Philadelphia Negro and the ecological conundrum. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 10(1), 7-27.

This article gave me background knowledge on the sociological, cultural, and economic factors at play for African Americans in the seventh ward.

Hunter, M. A. (2014) Black Philly after The Philadelphia Negro. Contexts. 12(1), 26-31.

This article gave me information about what happened to African American residents of the seventh ward in the decades after The Philadelphia Negro.

Jenks, H. C. (1888-1911). [Multiple images of seventh ward] [Photographs].Temple

University Digital Collections https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/search/searchterm/jenks%2C%20helen%20c.!jenks/field/creato!all/mode/exact!all/conn/and!all/order/nosort

These are historic photographs from around the time that Du Bois surveyed and wrote The Philadelphia Negro. Students will do close readings and discussion of these photos to learn about the seventh ward at this time and reflect on how photographs can be a form of historical data.

School District of Philadelphia (2023) “Facilities Planning Process” Retrieved

from http://www.philasdfacilities.info/Map

The map on this webpage gives the outline of Greenberg’s catchment area and all other neighborhood Philadelphia public schools.

School District of Philadelphia (2023) “School Profile: Joseph Greenberg Elementary”,

Retrieved from https://schoolprofiles.philasd.org/greenberg/overview

The tables on this webpage gave me demographic information of my school for context in this unit.

School District of Philadelphia (2018) Students by Primary Home Language [Table].

Retrieved from  https://dashboards.philasd.org/extensions/philadelphia/index.html#/enrollment

This chart gave me information on the ethnic makeup of my school for context in this unit.

Smalarz, M. (2016). The “White Island”: Whiteness in the Making of Public and Private

Space in Northeast Philadelphia, 1854-1990 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.

This work was shared with me by a fellow teacher in Northeast Philadelphia before I began the course. It sparked my interest in learning more about the history of Northeast Philadelphia and focusing on Northeast Philadelphia in my unit.

Strieb. L. Carini, P., Kanevsky, R. & Wice, B. (2012). Prospect’s Descriptive Processes:

The Child, The Art of Teaching, The Classroom and School: Revised Edition. (M.

Himley, Ed). The Prospect Archives and Center for Education and Research.

This book is a how-to for the reflective practices developed for teacher learning cooperatives by the Prospect Center. I used it as a reference for how to conduct a reflection on a word and close reading.

Appendix A: Teacher Created Materials

W.E.B. Du Bois’s map of the seventh ward in his book, The Philadelphia Negro

Part of Map

Map Key

Images from original copies of The Philadelphia Negro in Charles Blockson Collection, Temple University and University of Pennsylvania Archives. From Amy Hiller

W.E.B. Du Bois’s interview schedules for seventh ward

Rewrite the questions in your own words:

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What were the most confusing questions? __________________________________________________

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What questions do you think would give the most interesting information? _______________________

What questions could you still ask today? __________________________________________________

What questions would you not ask today? __________________________________________________

Rewrite the questions in your own words:

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What were the most confusing questions? __________________________________________________

What were the most surprising questions? __________________________________________________

What questions do you think would give the most interesting information? _______________________

What questions could you still ask today? __________________________________________________

What questions would you not ask today? __________________________________________________