Social Justice Issues Essays
Ms. Gomes’ (7-4) English classes spent the day in the library gathering facts for their upcoming Social Justice Essay Writing Project. Today was a “dip your toe in the water” day. That meant they would explore various sources and see what they could find out about it in a short period of time. Ms. Gomes had a handout for students to write the type of source they were looking at (book or database), the name of at least three different Social Justice issues of interest, one interesting fact for each one, and a quote.
To help them get started, I talked about some primary sources, showing them newspapers dating back to 1865, as well as current Boston Globes that they could use to see some past information about their issue. I also showed them the cart of books with Social Justice Issues I had assembled that they could explore as another way of locating information on their issue. Finally, I showed them how to explore the ABC-CLIO: Issues database to find issues of interest.
The students were information gathering for Essay Writing, and spent their time looking for issues of concern and interest. Divided into two groups, some worked with the books while others worked online. After a certain amount of time, the groups switched. When both groups had enough time to work, Ms. Gomes pulled them together and students took turns telling others about one interesting fact they had found either online or through a book.
On Monday, we will meet again for part 2 of this interesting part research-part Essay project.
