In this unit, centered around the core fiction text The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, 8th graders explore the history and implications of stereotyped gender roles, and about modern feminism. In the course of the unit, they respond to nonfiction text, analyze literature, reflect on their own parental expectations and write creatively. The students in my school are from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Material students may be able to contribute from their own ancestral families of origin will enrich the unit and help make it personally relevant. In addition to the expected focus on the stereotyping of women the unit can devote ample time to the stereotyping of boys and men, as well as feelings of entrapment as the result of parental expectations for many young people.

This unit is written for high school French 3 and 4, and it focuses on interpreting historical events while building up background knowledge. It creates an overall awareness about the French-speaking world rather than memorizing grammar structures and rules often emphasized in language learning. Our curriculum is designed to give the teachers leniency to expand and use history, art, culture, and cross-disciplinary topics. Students in French 3 and 4 can explore various themes independently – under the overarching themes of contemporary and standardized French language teaching. As students move from levels 1 and 2 to 3 and 4, the task difficulty increases as students go through stages of second language acquisition. Precisely, in levels 1 and 2, our curriculum, although thematic, focuses more on vocabulary, which is often contextualized. Hence, in French 3 and 4, the tasks become more cognitively demanding. The context becomes less evident as we go from conversational scenes to interpreting facts, giving opinions, and expressing thoughts in speaking and writing.

This unit is developed for an 8th grade English class using Monster by Walter Mosley as the core text. The overarching inspiration can be used for all grade levels along with the knowledge of ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) scores, and recent studies related to trauma informed care in education. The unit meets national Common Core language arts standards along with New Haven social emotional standards. Through the study of poetry, scenes and literature, students will be doing self reflective analysis of themselves and literary texts with the hope that a message of resilience can be developed. Writing will be a tool for academic and social/emotional self improvement. The activities range from creating a found poem, writing a scene, and creating a narrative.

A unit on wave phenomena, and its applications to detecting and evaluating extrasolar planets, and lighting and sound design in theatrical productions. The unit is designed for a high school physics class, but could be modified for physical science, astronomy, technical theater, or the middle school level.

This unit looks at the interplay between losses in privacy and gains in convenience that accompany the ever-expanding use of and reliance on digital media and technology in our lives. The aim is not to convince students of a specific stance; rather, it is to provide an opportunity for students to look critically at the ways in which privacy has changed and to think about taking intentional action regarding their own use of digital media.

Each week of the unit, students will grapple with an essential question that focuses their attention on one aspect of privacy. As the core text, George Orwell’s 1984 elucidates two major definitions of privacy: first, the internal thoughts that we develop and contemplate without outside influence; and second, the freedom from being observed, accessed, and controlled by outsiders.

Throughout this unit, students will produce short argumentative pieces drawing evidence from the texts read for and discussed in class. The short pieces of writing students produce throughout the class will culminate in a final argumentative essay weighing the interplay and value of privacy and convenience in our digital lives.

This unit will allow students to investigate the 1999 die-off of lobsters in the Long Island Sound. Students will understand the changes in the Long Island ecosystems over the years. They will also gain a deeper understanding of how systems are connected, particularly land and sea ecosystems, and the types of environmental influences that can influence the lobster population. This will allow students to gain a deeper understanding about the environment around them, develop scientific inquiry skills, and enhance their problem-solving skills.

This curriculum unit will allow students will learn about the role a variety of factors play in a watershed by examining the lobster die-off in the Long Island Sound. Students will become experts on the six major factors that scientists believe may have contributed to the lobster die-off including: bacterial infections that cause the breakdown of the exoskeleton, a parasite that attacks the nervous system, higher than normal water temperatures, environmental effects of pesticide and insecticide use, pollution, and changes in dissolved oxygen levels.

After learning about the various potential causes of the lobster die-off students will develop their own explanation citing evidence in order to defend what they believe caused this die-off.

This unit studies how manliness or lack of manliness affects Macbeth. Shakespeare presents a very strong Lady Macbeth who is in control of a fearful and hesitant Macbeth. The supernatural power of the weird sisters lures Macbeth to believe he should be king, and he seems to succumb to the power of women that is evoked by their feminine presence. The differences between man and woman loom throughout the text. The sexual and gender differences, the masculine and the feminine, constantly cross the boundaries and prove ambiguous. The unit analyzes and discusses Macbeth’s gender identity, and the authority it may have on Macbeth’s ethics. The students also read excerpts from “The History of Sexuality” by Michele Foucault, excerpts from “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” by Judith Butler, excerpts from “Sexual Transformation” by Gayle Rubin, and excerpts from “Female Masculinity” by Judith Halberstam. One goal of the unit is to make students understand, reflect about, discuss, and argue how Shakespeare sees gender, its influence on decision-making, and the reactions it might provoke. The other goal is to help students question their own stereotypes about gender and facile generalizations and/or prejudices. The unit adheres to the new Common Core Standards.

This unit is designed to give students an introduction to this pressing societal problems and to teach students how to analyze some of the compiled data on global warming through rates, ratios and proportions; students will also learn to make projections and predictions using slope, and linear and exponential functions.

To teach this unit, the teacher has to have at least a general knowledge of global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the carbon cycle. I thought that it was important to explain the basics of these topics. This unit is designed as a math unit, to help students gain a deeper understanding of linear functions, slope, exponential functions, as well as rates, ratios and proportions. Global warming, the carbon cycle, and the greenhouse effect, will be the real life application to which we will apply our mathematics.

The idea for this unit came from a study conducted by the State of Connecticut and their findings concerning the lack of genocide education taking place within schools. The survey showed that a large percentage of students graduating from high schools did not learn anything about the Holocaust or genocide. As a result of these startling findings, there has been a push within the education system in Connecticut to ensure that students are being taught about genocides at some point within the curriculum. This effort to ensure that students gain an understanding of the atrocities that have taken place throughout history is a worthwhile endeavor that should be met with unwavering support. However, when teachers want to focus on a specific genocide, the Holocaust is always the particular event that teachers seem to choose as a starting point. The events and crimes against humanity that took place during the Holocaust were indeed exceptional. However, they were not unprecedented. Well before the genocides in Nazi Germany, there were various other genocides that took place across the globe which leads to the question: how can we broaden our students understanding about these histories of genocide that took place across the globe in the early nineteenth century? It is this exact question that led me to develop this unit.

My curriculum will focus on examining early genocides of the twentieth century using maps as a way not only to deliver content to the students, but also to stimulate students to think about the content on a deeper level by developing various maps. It is the hope that these various map activities will allow for students to make a more significant connection to the topic in the process.

In this unit I will be utilizing maps in my classroom to help students comprehend a nonfiction text that explores the development of nineteenth century brain science through the story of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who is almost killed in an explosives accident. Although relatively brief, the book introduces a number of science-related concepts that can be difficult to grasp. I believe that using maps in the reading will help bridge gaps that students might have in fully understanding the story and its ramifications to nineteenth century brain science.

Maps are perfect for any lesson in any classroom, and if you look hard enough you can find a way to use a map for any lesson you are teaching, in any subject and for any age group. Maps are a perfect classroom tool that can and should be utilized to help students get better understanding of material on their own learning level. They are a natural tool for differentiation. They can be simple or very complex, they can include illustrations, numbers, symbols and signs. They can be colorful or plain. They can be made of an endless number of materials and used to interpret endless subjects and topics. They can be created with a crayon and a piece of paper, or the most powerful satellites mankind has ever known, and everything in between.

In this unit, we will endeavor to expose students to certain areas and histories of Africa using maps and mapmaking, as well as immersing ourselves in stories of Africa. The unit will focus on the Scramble for Africa – the imperial colonization of the continent by European nations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it will be enhanced by famous European literature of the time period as well as contrasting critique. We will start by talking about maps, their use and their value. We will then immerse ourselves in the Africa that Joseph Conrad created in his notorious novella Heart of Darkness. We will also analyze its relevance and appropriateness for modern syntheses of African culture and history, using an essay by the famed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. We will conclude by looking at a final map of the Congo, the country explored by Conrad and many European colonizers.

Maps are not simply graphic documents that help one get from point A to point B. They certainly accomplish that goal, but maps are also so much more. They are living documents, constantly changing with added knowledge and, indeed, perspective. They are records of our history as a human race, for better or worse. They are existential and philosophical; we may explore ourselves in exploring them. Where we have been, where we are going and why, can all be analyzed and reflected upon at various levels (personal and global) on a map.

The hope is, by the time students have absorbed this information, both their knowledge and appreciation of the African continent as a place just as real and strange and wonderous as their everyday lives will be impacted. And, ultimately, students will be able to discern for themselves where to find the most accurate descriptions of history, whether textual, graphic, or both.

This unit is based on the fourth-grade core text, Yolonda's Genius , by Carol Fenner. It intends to connect the core text to the general music curriculum and focus on responding and expressing identity through music. Students will concentrate on the responding and connecting processes from the National Core Arts Standards. Students will spend time exploring the identity of Andrew, the young boy in the novel who cannot read and barely speaks, but creates incredible music with his harmonica. Students will then create what they believe Andrew's music sounds like, and use what they learn about Andrew's creative process and the musical elements to create an original composition based on their own identity. This unit would work best if the General Music teacher works together with the fourth-grade Language Arts teacher.

At no other time in a person’s life does one search for a sense of identity, a definition of what self means on a personal level, than during adolescence. It is during the middle and high school years that we are provided meaningful opportunities to step outside of the principal parental/guardian dominated influence that shaped our identity for our first decade.

This unit explores the combined use of music and literature as a means through which youth and adolescence navigate the development of what I have defined as personal, projected and perceived identity. Lessons are organized using the three areas of scope as a guide through sequential and iterative modules designed to develop students’ lines of inquiry towards a deeper and broader understanding of how music mirrors and supports the psychological and emotional events impacting our sense of self.

This is a unit on local watersheds in the New Haven, CT area. It is designed for high school students to ask questions about their local watersheds, research information, collect data and observations, and use that new knowledge in a community service project to benefit their watershed or community.

This unit introduces students to the economics of gender inequality. The unit utilizes a series of interactive simulations and discussions designed with three instructional foci: increasing meaningful student-student discourse, using evidence to support claims, and using higher-order thinking strategies. The activities gauge students’ tacit understandings of productivity, equity, and fairness, providing male students an entry point to better understand the female perspective. All activities are mapped to AP units so the unit aligns with the AP Microeconomics standards and sequencing.

This unit begins by examining how social revolutions driven by comparative advantage gave rise to gender inequality. It then examines the relationship between marriage and game theory. The bulk of this unit examines labor markets and the wage gap. Finally, the unit examines gender-biased laws that show how inefficient government regulation leads to greater social inefficiency.

Activities are designed for an 80-minute class with approximately 25 students. Lessons call for students to sit in small groups to facilitate discussion and collaboration. Students will need access to a computer and the internet to complete multiple activities.

As a word of warning, the activities are meant to help students learn to empathize with the disparity caused by gender inequality and may make some students uncomfortable. One activity is designed so students believe their grade is determined in a way that mirrors the wage gap. It may be helpful to give parents a heads up before completing the activity to let them know the experiment will not actually affect their grades disproportionally.

The essential questions of the unit are
1. What social inefficiencies naturally arise in American product and labor markets?
2. What role does the government play in correcting market failures?
3. How can society and the government change current legislature and policy to promote gender equality in the product and labor markets?

“Ocean Acidification, Imminent Mass Extinction?” is a unit for an Earth, Physical, or Environmental Science classroom. This unit is easily included in larger curricula focusing on climate change, the carbon cycle, human impact on Earth, or ocean chemistry. A backdrop for the unit is that ocean acidification may be jeopardizing global primary production because phytoplankton are being forced to adapt to a lower and lower pH. Loss of this piece of the food web has the potential to collapse massive, if not the most massive, ecosystems, hence mass extinction. Past mass extinction events are briefly discussed.

The unit begins by presenting the phenomenon of an ocean pH that is changing and then delves into the chemistry behind the change. The unit also considers the biological consequences of an ocean that is more acidic than it had been in millennia. Furthermore, implications to global carbon cycling are considered as the planet relies on microscopic ocean creatures to sequester carbon and transport it into long term storage. Lastly, the unit presents some recent research into the effects of the increased ocean acidity on an array of different organisms. Student activities are focused on hands on demonstrations that help students gain an understanding of pH; how pH is affected by carbon dioxide; and how shells are vulnerable to acidic conditons.

The purpose of this unit is to analyze the different ways that race and law have operated over the course of American history. The unit is designed to be implemented in a United States History course, but can also be used in a Civics classroom as a way of understanding the function of the law. The unit compromises of three main case studies 1) Racial Formation of Legal Code in Colonial America with the specific focus on the aims and goals of the Naturalization Law of 1790 2) The Prerequisite Cases of the 1920s and finally, 3)Anti-Miscegenation Cases and Racial Categories at the time of the Eugenics Movement in the 1930s and 40s. The purpose of weaving these different historical time periods together is to help students reshape the ways in which they look at the law and more importantly understand how race and law have worked together to shape the world in which we live. The different case studies can be introduced individually or used in a thematic manner.

As English teachers, we often teach novels that reflect the struggles of racism and poverty within the African American community through the twentieth century. Landmark civil rights laws in the 1960’s changed the legal landscape of freedom in our country, but equality of opportunity and economic prosperity is still hindered by political policy and racism. It is critically important to reveal these truths to students, especially students in the African American community. However, as teachers, we should also be offering solutions to economic disparity that go beyond angry rhetoric, which are based in logic and are data-driven. What are some concrete ways families and individuals can break the cycle of poverty? What kinds of services should we as a society be fighting for? How does income parity benefit all of us? What are some ways to achieve this, and achieve a society that is more meritorious and efficient? This unit uses the play, A Raisin in the Sun as a model. The dreams of the Younger family are posed to students as choices to break out of poverty. Students will research the effects of moving to a good neighborhood, home ownership, college education, and entrepreneurship as economic paths to success.

In anatomy, form and function of sensory organs allows students to understand how the body interacts with external stimuli. Explorations of the eye and ear often lack a full exploration of the physical science phenomena behind them. In this unit, both the eye and ear are explored as receptors for wave phenomena of light and sound. The interaction between anatomy and physical science provides a robust understanding of how the body functions. In addition to a brief study of waves, students will also explore medical interventions such as the bionic eye, glasses, hearing aids, and cochlear implants as ways to improve our ability to sense sight and sound.

This curriculum unit, exploring the energy in food and the thermodynamics of cooking, will include 5 days of 80-minute lessons in which the students will pick a particular food to study. The food will either need to be purchased or produced, and will need to be a food that begins as batter or liquid and solidifies during cooking. For those students who, for any reason, cannot bring in the food, they will be provided a brownie, cupcake, or other common food item. The project will contain two main components or parts. First, the energy stored within the food will be analyzed by applying mathematics. This will require conversion between a common physics unit of kilojoules (kJ) and a common household unit of kilocalories (kcal, CAL or Calories). Students will then need to apply their knowledge of work and energy conservation to provide an example of physical exercise that would be required for them to expend an equal amount of energy that is contained in their food. If a student is uncomfortable sharing their own mass, they may use the common example of a 70-kg person. The second part of their project will involve them using experimental data to determine the heat diffusion constant for their particular food by using a method similar to that described by Rowat et al. published in 2014, “The kitchen as a physics classroom10.” This can be done by placing several thermocouples in their food sample (or probing with toothpicks as will be described later) while heating until the center of the food gets to a desired temperature. Once the diffusion constant is determined, it can then be used to derive an equation that will allow the students to determine the required cooking time based on the size of the food sample. Although larger meals may be interesting samples for the experiment, the food samples must remain reasonably small so that the experiment can be completed within a single class period and can be cooked using toaster ovens or small classroom heaters. Students, in groups of 2-3, will be required to share their data with the class so that the results can be discussed. Students will be graded on their mathematical analysis and an accurate derivation of an equation to predict cooking time based on their measured diffusion constant. Teacher checks will be structured strategically throughout the process to ensure student projects meet the requirements and that student groups remain on pace. By relating energy in food to exercises with equal outputs, and by generating equations to ensure foods will be cooked properly, students not only learn physics in an engaging way but also learn how physics can be used to tackle real-world problems.