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Lesson 1: Build Background Knowledge: The 1960s
50 min
California CCSS: Focus Standards
California CCSS: Supporting Standards
ELD Standards
Student Lesson
Lesson 1: Build Background Knowledge: The 1960s
Student Learning Objectives
1
Content
Students will analyze how the 1960s contained multiple, often contradictory realities for American youth culture.
2
Language
Students will describe and compare different aspects of 1960s youth culture by stating a clear claim about a specific group or subculture, using evidence from two nonfiction sources.
3
Foundations
Students will build knowledge of vocabulary words in historical context and learn the concept of historical complexity.
Essential Question
How do relationships and communities shape a person’s sense of belonging and identity?
Connections to
Knowledge-Building:
Students will explore the social and cultural complexity of the 1960s, learning that the decade was not defined by a single youth experience, but by many different ways of being young in America. This prepares students to understand how social context can contribute to individual identity.
Enduring Understanding:
Historical eras are rarely simple. Different groups of people can live through the same decade in very different ways, and understanding this complexity helps readers empathize with a wider range of characters and experiences.
Future Lessons:
In Lessons 2 and 3, students will investigate poverty and youth subcultures in the 1960s more specifically as they relate to the anchor text.
Unit Performance Task:
Building a nuanced picture of the 1960s will help students understand how social context shapes the choices characters make, informing their own narrative writing.
Lesson Pacing
| Lesson Flow | Purpose of Learning Experience |
|---|---|
Launch15 Minutes | Students activate prior knowledge about the 1960s, question whose stories are centered in a familiar historical narrative, and learn the idea of historical complexity. |
Learning in Action30 Minutes | Learning in Action Part A: The 1960s You Already Know (RI.7.1, RI.7.2, RI.7.3) Students read A Decade of Change: The 1960s in America and identify central ideas about activism, division, and counterculture. Learning in Action Part B: The 1960s You Might Not Know (RI.7.1, RI.7.2, RI.7.3, RI.7.7) Students analyze photographs and excerpts from Cool, Chrome and Rock ‘n’ Roll through a Jigsaw routine to build a more complex picture of youth identity in the era. |
Look Back5 Minutes | Students synthesize both texts by reflecting on how two very different truths can exist at the same time in the same historical period. |
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Addressed in Lesson
- subculture
- a group within a larger society that shares its own style, values, and identity
- counterculture
- a movement that rejects mainstream values and promotes different ways of living
Vocabulary for Additional Support
- conformity
- following the norms or expectations of a group instead of showing individuality
- historical complexity
- the idea that multiple and even contradictory experiences can be true at the same time in the same era
Material List
- Unit 1 Lesson 1 Student Edition
- Jigsaw Worksheet
- T-Chart graphic organizer
Routines
- Turn and Talk
- Think-Pair-Share
- Jigsaw Reading/Viewing
Lesson Sequence
Lesson Texts
Short-Form Text
A Time Like No Other
The 1960s was one of the most exciting and turbulent decades in American history. It began full of hope and ended in anger and exhaustion. During those ten years, Americans debated big questions: Who deserves to be treated equally? Is this war worth fighting? What kind of country do we want to be? The answers to those questions—and the battles fought over them—changed the United States forever.
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Short-Form Text
Cool, Chrome and Rock ‘n’ Roll: America after World War II
Standard News Bureau
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