Lesson Plan Example - The Ku Klux Klan

Part One: Organization of the Lesson Plan

• Topic.  The Ku Klux Klan
• Name of Course and Grade Level. U.S. History, 11th grade
• Theme(s). What is one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
• Key Vocabulary/Academic language: status quo, terrorism, political violence
• California Social Science Content Standards. Which of the grade-level appropriate California History-Social Science Standards are addressed in your lesson?
  • The history of the Ku Klux Klan fits into several places in the 11th grade standards:
    • 11.3.3 = Cite incidences of religious intolerance in the United States (e.g., persecution of Mormons, anti-Catholic sentiment, anti-Semitism).
    • 11.4.5 = Analyze the political, economic, and social ramifications of World War I on the home front.
    • 11.5.2 = Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey’s “back-to-Africa” movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration quotas and the responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation League to those attacks.
    • 11.11 = Analyze the major social problems and domestic policy issues in contemporary American society.
• Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Which of the grade-level appriate ELA Common Core Standards are addressed in your lesson? The CCSS.ELA standards below each refer to a "Text." In the case of this lesson, the text is the information presented in the three-day power point.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.2
    • Determine two or more 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 provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
    • Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
  • 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.
  • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.7. Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.
    
• Learning Objectives. What should students understand after this lesson is taught?
  • There were three different attempts to organize national KKK organizations since the end of the Civil War, all of which were designed to promote white supremacy.
  • Even though the national organizations were only popular during these three periods, local KKK organizations have been continuously in operation since the end of the Civil War.
  • The presence of the KKK has instilled terror in the lives of many Americans - people of color, people of religions other than Protestant, and so-called "race traitors".
  • The KKK can and should be considered a terrorist group.
  • What is one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
  • The KKK is still alive and well in the U.S.
• Timeline. How many days will it take? How does this lesson fit into a larger content unit? (If it is a two-day lesson contained within a larger 2-week unit on the Civil War, explain what will be taught the day before your lesson plan and the day after.)
  • This will take 3, maybe 4 days. It will be taught directly after the discussion of World War I. Because it is a case study, it will go back in time to explain how the original KKK was organized after the Civil War.
• Interdisciplinary component. How and where will you use other disciplines in the lesson plan - geography, music, art, literature, etc.?
  • I will use geography and photography to show how terrorist and hate groups have been a part of the American landscape for the past 150 years.
• Methods: What methods that we have discussed in class will you use in this lesson?
  • I will use the following methods: KWL, Think/Pair/Share followed by Small Group Discussion, Do Now, Write around.

Part Two The Lesson Plan Content and Instructional Strategy

• Link to previous content.
  • I will open with the following introductory statement: "We have just spent the last week discussing examples of religious intolerance in the United States. Today we are going to build upon that knowledge by beginning a 3-day case study of one of the greatest examples of religious AND racial intolerance in the United States - the Ku Klux Klan."
• Hook. I will use two different tactics to hook my students' interest.
  • First, I will ask the whole class to engage in a KWL - Know, Want to Know, and Learned - Method. I will put a chart on the board with three columns. The first will be "Know," the second will be "Want to Know" and the third will be "Learned." Then I will ask the students what they know about the KKK and add their answers to the column. Then I will ask them what they want to know and put their answers in the column. I will explain that we will leave this on the board for the next three days and we will fill out the final column when we are done studying the KKK.
  • Next, I will explain that the 8-minute video they are about to see will provide more information about both what they already know and what they want to know. The video, "Inside the KKK" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D10Y_35p98, was filmed in 2014 and will give students an undertanding of the contemporary KKK. After the video, I will ask the students to complete a "Do Now" in which they will spend 3 minutes writing down what they think is the bottom line, most important point the video makes. Then we will open it into an entire class discussion to be ascertain what students learned from the video.
• Transition: 
  • I will transition to the content by using the following statement: "Now we have an undertanding of the the contemporary KKK. So next, it is important to understand the evolution of the organization and to compare and contrast how it has evolved over the 150 years that it has been in existence."
• Lesson Content. I will use a power point presentation which will provide the complete lecture content, the discussion questions, and the methods used to assess students' understanding of each day of the lesson.
• Methods. The methods I use will be embedded in the lesson plan. They are as follows:
  • Days 1-3:
    • KWL in which we discuss what the students already know about the Klan and what they want to learn about the KKK.
    • Once we begin the power point, I will use a Think/Pair/Share to have the students decide upon a definition of terrorism that we can use throughout the lesson. I will also use a DBQ in which students will read and discuss a newspaper report from 1868 about KKK activity in Alabama. I will end the first and second days' discussion with an Exit Slip.
  • Final Day - I will use three methods
    • The first will be a Small Group Discussion in which groups of 4-5 students will meet for 10 minutes to determine what they believe are the 3-5 most important things they have learned about the KKK.
    • The second will be to complete the KWL chart by filling in the "Learn" section with the five most important things students think we should know about the KKK.
    • The third will be a Write Around based upon the question: "Do you think the KKK is a terrorist organization? How and why?" This is designed to test how well students understood how the topic of the KKK is or is not an illustration of the course theme "What is one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
• Conclusion. How will you conclude your lesson in a manner that emphasizes the course theme(s) in today's lesson?
• Bibliography.  What bibliographical resources did you use?  Include a bibliography of all resources used.
  • Blanche, Buddy. In the Crossfire of the Klan. (LuLu Publishing Service, 2015)
  • Chalmers, David. Hood Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1987)
  • Kennedy, Stetson. The Klan Unmasked. (Tuskaloosa, Alabama: University of Albama Press, 2011)
  • Pegram, Thomas. One Hundred Percent American. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011)