Project Overview

Guiding Questions:

1. What are human rights and how can they be threatened?

2. How can we raise awareness of human rights?

In this module, students learned about human rights and how they could be threatened. They also learned about the importance of raising and spreading awareness of human rights to others. We used the text Esperanza Rising to lead our discussion about how human rights were threatened and how characters in our book had to overcome injustice. We used the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abridged for youth) to make connections.

This background research led to our two final products. First we created an art installation including all 30 human rights. Through multiple drafts, students collaborated to decide the layout and colors of the wings. Students used watercolor paints to create the feathers of the wings. The second product was a map of each student’s perfect world. Those chose 3-5 human rights that resonated with them. They created a map that had locations tied to each human right they chose and described its importance to their world in writing.

From EL's ELA Curriculum G5:M1