Pride Month provides an opportunity for students to focus on the voices and experiences of members of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history during the month of June. While Fishtank ELA highlights these voices across grades and across units year round, we know it can be particularly impactful to dedicate this time to these stories. To help you make the most of this time, we are highlighting two of our favorite units to teach during Pride Month in elementary and middle school ELA.
Elementary School Highlight: Movements for Equality
The 1st-grade Movements for Equality unit introduces students to many of the equal rights movements that have happened in the United States. During Pride Month, teachers can use this unit to help students explore the LGTBQ+ rights movement through two texts that focus on the legacy of the Stonewall Inn and Harvey Milk’s influence on the movement.
As they read Stonewall: A Building, an Uprising, a Revolution, students work to answer a variety of Key Questions that build their knowledge of the LGTBQ+ movement and the Stonewall Uprising. Additionally, students internalize new vocabulary words relevant to the movement and those involved.
Key Questions
- How did New York City’s Greenwich Village change? Give multiple examples.
- How did Greenwich Village continue to change?
- Who came to the Stonewall Inn? Why?
- What does it mean that others were not as accepting? What did they believe?
- What does it mean that people stood defiantly in the street? Why were they standing defiantly?
- What does it mean that the anger grew into a smoldering resistance? Why did this happen?
- What happened at the Stonewall Uprising? Why was it important?
- What happened on June 28, 1970? Why was this important?
- How are things different at the Stonewall Inn now?
In Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag, students build upon their knowledge of the LGTBQ+ rights movement, learning about Harvey Milk and the impact of the flag he helped create. Students answer Key Questions related to Harvey Milk’s life and legacy and the importance of the rainbow flag today.
Key Questions
- What was Harvey’s dream? What did he do to spread his dream?
- What was Harvey’s idea? Why is his idea important?
- What symbol did Harvey, Gilbert, and the other activists create? Why?
- How was the flag used? How did it make people feel?
- What happened to Harvey? How did people respond?
- What happened to the flag after Harvey died? What did it symbolize?
- What do the people demand? How do they use the flag to show their demands?
- Where has the Rainbow Flag flown? Why is this important?
After reading both texts, students spend two days engaged in a Discussion & Writing lesson as they work to address the following prompt: You are on a walk with a friend and you see a LGBTQ+ flag on a neighbor's house. Your friend wonders what the flag means. Explain to your friend what the flag represents and why it is important.
The Enhanced Lesson Plan, available to Plus users, offers guidance to support a full class discussion of the goals of LGTBQ+ movement, the importance of LGTBQ+ rights, and ways in which people stood up and fought for justice. Additionally, the Enhanced Lesson Plan provides structured time for students to engage in independent writing.
Middle School Highlight: Claiming Our Place: LGBTQ+ Experiences in the United States
In 7th grade, students have a unit dedicated to exploring the contributions and experiences of LGBTQ+ Americans in the past and present: Claiming Our Place. The unit centers around the nonfiction text The 57 Bus which explores issues of race, class, gender, sexual identity, and criminal justice. In addition to the core text, students engage with a number of supporting materials including articles, and videos.
Through the text and supporting materials, students work to address the unit’s Essential Questions and build Enduring Understandings.
Essential Questions
- What challenges have LGBTQ+ Americans faced in the past, what challenges do they continue to face, and how have they survived and thrived in spite of repression, violence, and discrimination?
- How does binary thinking shape the way that we understand other people and the world around us?
Enduring Understandings
- LGBTQ+ have had to fight for social acceptance and equal protection under the law in the face of discrimination, persecution, and violence.
- Binaries limit our understanding of people and of the world around us; the world is a much more complex and interesting place than binaries allow us to see.
Over the course of the unit, students engage in a Socratic Seminar and a multi-day writing project.
During their Socratic Seminar, students use their knowledge of the LGBTQ+ history and evidence from the unit materials to answer the Key Questions.
Key Questions
- How does your knowledge of LGBTQ+ history shape the way you understand the events in The 57 Bus?
- What does the response to Sasha reveal about the progress that has been made for LGBTQ+ people in this country, and how does it reveal the challenges that LGBTQ+ people continue to face?
- In what ways is Sasha an activist and changemaker for LGBTQ+ people?
- What is Slater’s purpose in writing this text? Does she achieve it?
- In what way does the media’s portrayal of the fire represent a binary view of the situation?
- Does this book have a hero? Does it have a villain?
- What is this book trying to say about the relationship between privilege and power?
The writing project asks students to research the life, work, and accomplishments of one LGTBQ+ American and write a four-paragraph letter explaining why that person should be chosen to be put on a stamp by the United States Postal Service's Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. The Enhanced Lesson Plans, available to Fishtank Plus users, provide additional resources for research, a list of individuals that students can select from, and language mini lessons to support students’ creation of complex and compound-complex sentences.
This unit was added to the Fishtank curriculum in 2021 to help give students as many perspectives as possible to consider the yearlong question, “What does it mean to be an American?” and repeated opportunities to complicate and deepen their answers. Learn more about the creation of this unit from Fishtank Curriculum Writer Caroline Gambell.
Stay up to date with timely texts and ideas for engaging students year round on the Fishtank Blog and our social media accounts. We want to know how you’re celebrating LGBTQ+ stories this month! Tell us your favorite texts to teach and activities for Pride Month.
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