Choices in Little Rock Assessment 2

About This Assessment

In this activity, students will begin to collect evidence and reflect on their responses to the essential question: “How do the choices people make, individually and collectively, strengthen or weaken democracy?” This activity will help prepare them to complete the argumentative essay at the conclusion of the unit. 

At this point in the unit, students have begun to examine the power and impact of choices made by individuals and communities, including efforts by Homer Plessy, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, the NAACP, and the school board of Hoxie, Arkansas, to challenge racial segregation. They also learned about efforts to advance racial segregation by institutions, individuals, and groups, including the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, Little Rock superintendent Virgil Blossom, and the community of Prince Edward County.

Essential Question

• How do the choices people make, individually and collectively, strengthen or weaken democracy?

Procedure

Activity: Reflecting on the Choices of Institutions, Individuals, and Communities (After Lesson 7

Start by explaining to students that they will reflect on the choices made by individuals, groups, and institutions that either strengthened or weakened democracy and draw connections to the essential question: “How do the choices people make, individually and collectively, strengthen or weaken democracy?”  

Next, guide students in developing an understanding of what institutions are. Explain that institutions are established organizations within a society that meet the needs of its members. ¹ Offer students some examples: 

• People need to be taken care of when they’re ill, so we have hospitals. Hospitals are institutions. 
• People need loans to buy a house, so we have banks. Banks are institutions. 
• Ask students if they can identify institutions from the unit.

If students struggle to identify examples of institutions from the unit, explain that the Supreme Court of the United States is an institution.

Have students create a chart in their notebooks with the following categories (note that they have already seen this chart in Lesson 7):  

• Column 1: Individual, Group, or Institution Making the Choice
• Column 2: What is one choice that they made? 
• Column 3: Why did they act the way they did? What factors may have motivated their choice?
• Column 4: What were the possible or actual consequences of their choice?
• Column 5: How did the choice strengthen or weaken democracy?

Let students know that they should be filling in the chart as the unit progresses. To support students in completing the chart, distribute the handout The Choices of Individuals, Groups, and Institutions. Explain to students that the handout lists the choices that appear in different lessons of the unit. If students are struggling to identify choices for their own charts, they can refer to this chart for ideas, copy the choices to their own charts, and then complete the analysis of them. Explain that students may add additional choices made by individuals, groups, or institutions from the unit to their charts that are not captured in the list. 

If necessary, model for students how to complete the chart using the example in the Google Doc version of this assessment.

• 1Definition adapted from Camara Phyllis Jones, “Levels of Racism: A Theoretic Framework and a Gardener’s Tale,” American Journal of Public Health 90, no. 8 (August 2000): 1212–15.