Rationale
Rationale
Rationale
Our goal for this unit is to teach students about compassion in the 21st Century. We
wanted to take this a step further, though, in order to teach students that compassion should
compel us to activism. Our focus on compassion and its relation to activism has encouraged us to
focus our unit on the idea of “compactivism,” a term our cohort has coined in hopes to show
students the strong relationship between the two words. With current social issues, especially in
regards to refugees and immigration, we felt like the text that would help our students best
understand the implications of these issues was Refugee by Alan Gratz. This text follows three
different characters who all become refugees and have different experiences of displacements
throughout the world. The characters, Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud, are all from different time
periods and varying parts of the world. Their experiences look different, but Gratz includes
similarities between their journeys and intertwines each character to one another in a unique
way.
The decision behind choosing Refugee to be our focus text for this unit was based on
several factors, such as the need for civil action in our society. In the 21st century, showing
compassion through simply our words is not enough. There are never enough words that will be
able to fix a legitimate problem. The key to actual change in alleviating various social problems
is being an active citizen and participating in our democracy. This is where activism is important
and highlights how it needs to go hand-in-hand with compassion. To accomplish this change, we
have chosen to use Refugee to guide our unit in hopes of creating compassionate, active students,
our students. The first week of the Compactivism Unit students will focus on compassion in a
general sense as they are introduced to the Alan Gratz’ novel, Refugee. The first lesson of the
unit will be focused on students building their background knowledge on the novel through an
anticipatory activity. In addition to that, students will craft their own written definition of the
word compassion as it relates to them and their role in a larger global society.
The second week of our unit will focus on compassion as it relates to the novel itself.
Students will dive into the book to see how the characters within the novel do or do not display a
variation of compassion and how that affects the development of the plot. Throughout this week,
students will also be making connections between compassion in the novel and compassion
beyond the confines of the book cover. In another lesson, groups of students will watch several
videos about compassion, in order to make connections between the novel and their own reality.
This lesson aims to provide audiovisuals for students, as well as to scaffold students as they will
be creating their own piece of digital media the last week of the unit. This week will also consist
of students writing an “extended definition” paper on the word compassion and what that looks
like in their own community (Smagorinsky 2008). Students will practice peer editing as they
work on these papers to further engage in collaborative work and to see writing as more of a
process.
The third and final week of the unit will focus on compassion and how that spurs
activism in the lives of the students. Students will be defining activism and focusing specifically
on characters who practiced activism within the novel. The first day of that week will be a lesson
that concentrates on the transition from compassion to activism within the novel. Throughout the
rest of the week, students will be working on their final project. The groups for this project will
be based on interest. Each group will collectively choose an organization that they are passionate
about and create a video that invites others to engage in their chosen form of compactivism for
Within the scope of our unit, we are utilizing multiple avenues of student learning. The
lessons will chronologically and coherently build off of each other and finally culminate into the
final project where students are creating videos to compel others into some form of social action.
Because of this progression from understanding to application to creation, our unit directly
This taxonomy is directly shown in our unit because we are tasking students to first remember
and understand. Then students will take that understanding and further it by analyzing and
evaluating it. Similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy, our final step is providing space for students to
create new schemata of the simple concept of compassion, creating a video to justify their beliefs
Students are additionally working together collaboratively in groups throughout this unit
where they will be subject to peer learning. This means that the teacher will not be taking a direct
role in instruction of students, but rather will be helping facilitate meaning construction in
students. This directly adheres to another prominent educational theorist Lev Vygotsky. He
deemed that students learn better through social interaction and that teachers are to take the role
of a facilitator, instead of direct instruction (Vygotsky 1980). Having students define compassion
and then work their pre-existing beliefs into the creation of a new belief also correlates with
In this theory of Cognitive Development, Jean Piaget argues that adolescents have
schemata, or mental building blocks, of which they store meanings, beliefs, and perceptions
about the world. Each building block is “governed by a core meaning" (Piaget 1936). Due to the
fact that adolescents will have a previously held core meaning of compassion, in this unit, we are
building off of that previously held knowledge. The new knowledge will be then stored and put
in place of the old core meaning because of what Piaget describes as “disequilibrium” (Piaget
1936). This disruption to the students previously held definition of compassion will push
students to a state of mental disequilibrium, where they have to formulate a new definition to get
back to equilibrium. It is clear to see that the instructional principles that guide our unit are
derived from theory and clearly align with North Carolina State Standards.
The standards that align with this unit and our specific assessments include a variety of
skills. To meet the standards, students are required to read, write, gather information from a
variety of sources, engage in collaborative discussions, and create visual representations of their
writing. The lessons and assessments of this unit have been created with the skills outlined in the
standards in mind. In specific lessons, students will practice writing explanatory pieces,
specifically writing about compassion in both the book and in their own lives. This correlates to
standard W.7.2. They will also have to argue what compassion is and is not, specifically through
their writing, which addresses the standard W.7.1. For the formative assessment that highlights
their ability to meet these skills, students will be writing their extended definition papers on
compassion. In this paper, they will also meet the standard W.7.6 through their use of citing
other people’s print or digital work that has helped them come up with their own definition. As
part of the rough draft process, students will have to discuss with their peers the validity of the
sources that they are using. This is another aspect of the standard W.7.6, which asks them to
Another aspect of this unit is the discussion and collaboration that students will engage
in. One of the informal assessments that we are doing in this unit is looking at soundbites of
compassion and coming up with a class list of what compassion looks like. Students will need to
collaborate with classmates to come up with a definitive list of what compassion is, eliminating
the ideas that are not. They will need to work together and discuss what that looks like based on
their knowledge and experiences of what they believe compassion to be. Students will also be
Discussions are key in this unit, as we want students to be reflecting on how compassion and
activism is relevant to and apparent in their everyday lives. This can be subjective, but we want
students to be able to learn from one another’s perspectives and ideas about what compactivism
looks like.
The summative assessment for the unit, outlined earlier, is the video that students are
making about a topic they have compassion for, compelling others into activism and getting
involved. This meets the standard W.7.4 because it is taking students’ ideas about compassion,
including those outlined in their extended definition paper, and asking them to make that into a
digital resource that they can publish and get feedback on. Students can create scripts for their
videos on a Google Doc, allowing them to collaborate, give feedback to one another, and interact
with others within their group, as well as others in different groups. The choice to have the
students create “compactivism” videos as their final assessment for this unit stems from various
theories of education mentioned above as well as support from the National Council of Teachers
immersive learning experiences, and reach out to their own community and a global
audience” (NCTE).
By having students create their own videos about compactivism, they will make meaning of their
own learning. As they actively apply what they have learned thus in the unit, students will make
this new knowledge relevant to their own lives by engaging their community in topics that they
feel passionately about. Although students are not directly engaging in service learning, they are
beginning the steps to a more pragmatic kind of learning in which John Dewey has championed.
Overall, this unit meets many of not only our students’ needs, but also what is required of
them through the state standards and curriculum. Students will be engaging in relevant,
interesting, and developmentally appropriate material. This unit is one that will help our students
understand more about concepts that are specific to their English language arts classroom, as
well as concepts that students will need to have for the rest of their lives. Ultimately, we want
students’ interests to be sparked so that they continue wanting to learn and make a difference in
Anderson, Lorin W.; Krathwohl, David R.; Bloom, Benjamin S. (Benjamin Samuel), 1913-1999,
2001
National Council of Teachers of English “Beliefs for Integrating Technology into the English
http://www2.ncte.org/statement/beliefs-technology-preparation-english-teachers/
Piaget, J. (1936). Origins of intelligence in the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Smagorinsky, P. (2008). Teaching English by design: How to Create and Carry Out