Every family has stories — funny ones, brave ones, and ones that teach big lessons. In this unit, we read folktales and family stories from all over the world, including Anansi the Spider, Coyote trickster tales, abuela stories from Latin America, and Moon Festival traditions from Asia. We use author Rudine Sims Bishop's idea that books are "mirrors" (we see ourselves!) and "windows" (we look into someone else's world). By the end, students discover that their own family's stories are just as powerful and worth telling.
What stories does YOUR family tell — and what do they teach?
In this unit, students explore the many helpers who make a community strong — from firefighters and teachers to grandmothers and neighbors. Through culturally rich picture-book style texts, oral traditions, and community narratives, students discover that heroes come in every shape, language, and background, and that they themselves have the power to help too.
Who helps make our community strong — and how can YOU be a helper too?
Exploring the world through food, music, language, and traditions. Students connect maps and places to living cultures — making geography feel alive, not abstract. Each lesson zooms in on one lens through which culture expresses itself, building toward a personal "cultural map" of each student's own identity.
How do the foods we eat, the music we make, the languages we speak, and the celebrations we share tell the story of who we are and where we come from?
In this unit, students explore what it means to build bridges — between cultures, languages, generations, and ideas. Through powerful fiction, biography-inspired narratives, and poetry drawn from diverse global traditions, students examine what it takes to stand up, speak out, and cross the distances that divide us. They will discover that courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to act anyway.
What does it mean to "cross a bridge" — and what happens to you when you do?
In this unit, students grapple with one of the most important questions in literacy: who gets to tell the story — and what happens to everyone else? Inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's concept of "the danger of a single story," students explore how narratives shape what we believe, who we see, and what we think is possible. Through murals, protest songs, youth activists, and diverse storytelling, they discover that art is not decoration — it is resistance. And every person who speaks their own truth is adding to the story of the world.
Who gets to tell the story — and what is lost when only one story is told?
In this unit, students explore the universal human experience of migration — leaving one home and finding another. Through original texts inspired by the voices of Jacqueline Woodson, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Jason Reynolds, students discover that migration is never just about geography. It is about memory, language, loss, and the stubborn, beautiful work of belonging. From the suitcase packed in secret to the neighborhood that finally feels like home, every lesson asks: what do we carry, and what do we become?
What do we carry with us when we move — and what do we leave behind?
In this unit, students explore how identity shapes voice and how voice shapes the world. Through diverse texts spanning cultures, continents, and centuries, students examine the ways writers claim, defend, and celebrate who they are. From the power held in a name to the courage of speaking across two worlds, every lesson connects the personal to the universal.
How does who we are shape what we say — and how we say it?
In this unit, students explore how people across cultures and centuries have resisted injustice and found strength in adversity. Through texts spanning the African American literary tradition, Latina storytelling, global activism, and the immigrant experience, students examine what it means to push back against systems that try to silence, diminish, or erase. Every lesson asks: what does it cost to resist, and what does it cost not to?
What gives people the courage to resist injustice — and what forms can that resistance take?
In this unit, students move from understanding injustice to demanding change. Building on the roots and routes of Grade 6, the identity work of Grade 7, and the resistance of Grade 8, 9th graders now ask the next question: What does it take to build a more just world? Through texts spanning courtrooms and classrooms, street protests and quiet conversations, students examine how individuals and communities become advocates — and what sustains them when the work is slow, painful, and never finished.
What does justice require of us — and what does advocacy cost?
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