11th Grade  Project 12 weeks

Rebels, Rights, and Revolution

JLundgren
Updated
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.9
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.10
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6
+ 11 more
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Purpose

Students investigate how civil disobedience has shaped American history by analyzing the American Revolution and later movements through multiple, often conflicting perspectives. They examine foundational documents, literary texts, and historical accounts to identify bias, evaluate reasoning, and ask how perspective affects understanding. Through collaborative discussion, source analysis, and unit-end assessments, they build toward argumentative essays that challenge accepted narratives and connect historical struggles to issues in the world around them.

Learning goals

Students will analyze how civil disobedience appears across American history by comparing primary and secondary sources, identifying bias, perspective, and whose voices are centered or left out. They will evaluate how authors build arguments in foundational U.S. documents, historical accounts, and public advocacy texts, and use that evidence to explain how perspective affects understanding. Students will write evidence-based argumentative essays that make claims about historical and contemporary acts of civil disobedience, drawing on multiple texts and viewpoints. They will also strengthen discussion, collaboration, and self-reflection skills by participating in structured dialogue, giving and using feedback, and revising their thinking over the course of each unit.

Standards
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.9 - Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9 - Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1 - Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11—12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.10 - By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 11—CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6 - Evaluate authors' differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors' claims, reasoning, and evidence.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.9 - Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.8 - Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning (e.g., in U.S. Supreme Court majority opinions and dissents) and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy (e.g., The Federalist, presidential addresses).
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.1 - Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.3 - Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
  • [Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2 - Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
Competencies
  • Critical Thinking & Problem Solving - Students consider a variety of innovative approaches to address and understand complex questions that are authentic and important to their communities.
  • Effective Communication - Students practice listening to understand, communicating with empathy, and share their learning through exhibiting, presenting and reflecting on their work.
  • Collaboration - Students co-design projects with peers, exercise shared-decision making, strengthen relational agency, resolve conflict, and assume leadership roles.
  • Academic Mindset - Students establish a sense of place, identity, and belonging to increase self-efficacy while engaging in critical reflection and action.
  • Self Directed Learning - Students use teacher and peer feedback and self-reflection to monitor and direct their own learning while building self knowledge both in and out of the classroom.
  • Content Expertise - Students develop key competencies, skills, and dispositions with ample opportunities to apply knowledge and engage in work that matters to them.

Products

Students will create a unit-end product in each 3-week cycle, including source annotations, perspective charts, discussion notes, and short written claims that answer what types of civil disobedience appear across American history. Throughout the course, they will produce three argumentative essays that compare historical and contemporary acts of resistance, analyze how bias and perspective affect understanding, and use evidence from foundational U.S. documents, literature, speeches, and secondary sources. Students will also build a collaborative timeline or exhibit that presents multiple perspectives on key events and highlights which voices were centered, marginalized, or erased. The final product will be a polished argument portfolio and presentation that defends a clear claim about civil disobedience in American history and questions the reliability of commonly accepted sources.

Launch

Open with a gallery walk of paired texts and images on civil disobedience across American history—such as the Boston Tea Party, abolitionist resistance, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, and current protests—where students sort each example as “patriotic,” “criminal,” or “both” and defend their choices with evidence. Follow with a structured discussion in which students compare how a textbook excerpt, a speech, and a counter-narrative source frame the same event, naming bias, perspective, and whose voices are missing. End by introducing the driving questions about how bias and perspective affect understanding and what types of civil disobedience recur over time, then have students write a brief claim they may later revisit in their argumentative essays.

Exhibition

Host a public “Civil Disobedience in America” symposium where students present their strongest argumentative essay through a 5-minute talk, defend their claim with annotated primary and secondary sources, and explain how bias and perspective shaped their interpretation. Invite families, other history/ELA classes, and community members to rotate through student panels that compare different acts of civil disobedience across eras and evaluate whose voices were centered, marginalized, or erased. Include a gallery walk with visual evidence boards, source credibility notes, and brief reflections connecting historical patterns to current issues. End with a audience feedback protocol so students respond to questions, reflect on their learning, and revise a final published version of their essay.