Language+Arts

Language Arts Learning Unit Plan **Rationale**:

Throughout the unit of hunger in our community in language arts, students will be raising the awareness that people are struggling here in our community as well as around the world. Students will raise awareness that people in our community may not have food or eat non-nutritious food by writing letters to community members as well as politicians to raise the awareness outside of the school. Students will plan part of their hunger service project while formulating creative ways to share the awareness and getting the community involved. The students will create a letter during the hunger awareness unit as well as creating ways to collect food on ways that they organize as a class by using tools they have learned in language arts to do it effectively. The final component of their language arts unit will be to create a brochure to hand out to inform others about hunger as well as places they can get free and reduced priced healthy and whole grain food.

**Objectives**: After successful completion of this unit, the students will be able to:
 * Identify the problem of hunger in Milwaukee and the United States.
 * Create a letter to inform a person about the lack of food in their own community
 * Formulate a plan to communicate the problem and raise awareness to help those in need.

=**Common Core Standards**: =

**Production and distribution of Writing** 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. 5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach. 6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
 * Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas**

Activities:
Day 1: Students have researched and been provided with information on malnutrition and the importance of healthy food the past two weeks. Students will brainstorm and start a rough draft on writing a letter to a local community member or a politician to raise awareness on what is happening in our community with malnutrition. We will discuss how to write a formal letter and how to address the letter with "Dear" and "Sincerely". Students are required to write one letter, but can write as many as they want to multiple people.

Day 2: Students will write their final draft of the letter to the person of their choice. They are also to bring the address of the person(s) they are sending the letter to. As a class, we will go over how to address envelopes with proper name and return address.

Day 3: Each student will be given a child's story from the website: [] and will read about how they live and survive. Students will compare their lives to the ones they read about and how thankful we are for what we have and are provided with. The class will read the stories and have a discussion for the rest of the class about the similarities and differences in their lives. Student's will also be paired into groups of 3 and will make a slogan for the St. Vincent de Paul dinner. Student's can be as creative as they want but the class will ultimately pick the slogan to be used.

Day 4: Students will create a flier/brochure to hand out to the people at the dinner at St. Vincent de Paul's. The students will use the information they have learned over the past few weeks to include information such as the importance of nutritious food, places to get food for free/reduced price and statistics of people who are under served or eating non healthy food in Milwaukee. The class will be divided into groups of 3 and each group will make the flier/brochure. Once completed, the class will vote on which one will be handed out at the dinner and copies will be made.