Using Technology to Connect the Dots Between Inquiry and the Common Core Standards for Research in the High School English Classroom

Anne Marie Esposito

This 8 to 10 day, 90 minute blocked-scheduled curriculum unit invites students to learn more about the issues confronting families and communities living in the segregated south during the 1930s in preparation for their close reading of To Kill a Mockingbird, written in the 60s by Harper Lee. Adopting an inquiry-based approach to research and learning, this unit is designed to have students develop research questions around issues explored in the novel. The unit will initially focus students on the Jim Crow laws and then assist them in developing a focused research question and the guiding questions they need to direct their research. As part of their inquiry students will learn how to navigate an electronic database; access, evaluate, and document information; and finally synthesize and organize the information into a product they will share with their classmates. More importantly, through their use of primary and secondary sources, students, like Scout, the novel’s narrator, will learn to see life during that time period through the eyes of those who actually experienced it.