2nd grade Unit 4:
A Long Journey to Freedom
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins (1960) (Carole Boston Weatherford and Jerome
Lagarrigue)
Words Like Freedom” (Langston Hughes) (EA)
Dear Mr. Rosenwald (1920) (Carole Boston Weatherford)
Finding Lincoln (1951) (Ann Malaspina and Colin Bootman)
The Other Side (1950s) (Jacqueline Woodson and E.B. Lewis)
A Sweet Smell of Roses (1963) (Angela Johnson and Eric Velasquez)
Freedom Summer (1964) (Deborah Wiles and Jerome Lagarrigue)
“Rosa” (Rita Dove)
“Merry-Go-Round” (Langston Hughes) (EA)
“Harriet Tubman” (Eloise Greenfield)
“Lincoln” (Nancy Byrd Turner)
Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad (1849) (Ellen Levine and Kadir
Nelson)
Rosa Parks (Rookie Biographies) (1955) (Wil Mara)
Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story (1960) (Ruby Bridges)
Martin Luther King and the March on Washington (1963) (Frances E. Ruffin and Stephen Marchesi)
(E)
Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)(Doreen Rappaport and Bryan
Collier)
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (c.1820-1913) (Carole Boston
Weatherford and Kadir Nelson)
Lincoln: A Photobiography (Russell Freedman) (E)
A Picture Book of Jesse Owen (1935) (David A. Adler and Robert Casilla)
Stories
Poems
Stories
(Read-Aloud)
Poems
(Read-Aloud)
Informational Text
Informational Text
(Read-Aloud)
The Story of Ruby Bridges (1960) (Robert Coles and George Ford) (E)
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down (1960) (Andrea D. and Brian Pinkney)
Birmingham, 1963 (1963) (Carole Boston Weatherford)
Performance Task for Unit 4:
A Long Journey to Freedom
Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman

Students explain how the main idea that Lincoln had “many faces” in Russell Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiography is
supported by key details in the text. [RI.3.2]
The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Cole

Students read Robert Coles’s retelling of a series of historical events in The Story of Ruby Bridges. Using their knowledge
of how cause and effect gives order to events, they use specific language to describe the sequenceof events that
leads to Ruby desegregating her school. [RI.3.3]
Suggested Shared Reading Activity
The poems about Harriet Tubman (“Harriet Tubman,” Eloise Greenfield) and Abraham Lincoln (“Lincoln,” Nancy Byrd Turner)
are narrative poems that tell a story. All students need to see the poems as you discuss. Use these questions to discuss the
poems:




How are the poems similar and how are they different?
What poetic elements do you hear/see in the poetry (e.g., alliteration, repetition, regular
beats, and rhyme)?
What is the message of each poem? Are they similar or different?
Which of the poems uses formal English and which one uses more informal English? (L.2.3a,
RL.2.4)
Harriet Tubman by Eloise Greenfield
Harriet Tubman didn't take no stuff
Wasn't scared of nothing neither
Didn't come in this world to be no slave
And wasn't going to stay one either
"Farewell!" she sang to her friends one night
She was mighty sad to leave'em
But she ran away that dark, hot night
Ran looking for her freedom
She ran to woods and she ran through the woods
With the slave catchers right behind her
And she kept on going til she got to the NOrth Where those mean men couldn't find her
Nineteen times she went back South
To get three hundred others
She ran for her freedom nineteen times
To save black sisters and brothers
Harriet Tubman didn't take no stuff
Wasn't scared of nothing neither
Didn't come in this world to be no slave
And didn't stay one either
And didn't stay one either
Lincoln by Nancy Byrd Turner
There was a boy of other days,
A quiet, awkward, earnest lad,
Who trudged long weary miles to get
A book on which his heart was set—
And then no candle had!
He was too poor to buy a lamp
But very wise in woodmen’s ways.
He gathered seasoned bough and stem,
And crisping leaf, and kindled them
Into a ruddy blaze.
Then as he lay full length and read,
The firelight flickered on his face,
And etched his shadow on the gloom,
And made a picture in the room,
In that most humble place.
The hard years came, the hard years went,
But, gentle, brave, and strong of will,
He met them all. And when today
We see his pictured face, we say,
“There’s light upon it still.”