To Kill a Mockingbird Unit Curriculum Map
Essential Questions:
1. Why is it important to teach
people to think for themselves,
rather than just following the
rules?
2. What are injustices and how can
the individual find a way to
confront or resolve such
unfairness?
3. When does childhood end and
adulthood begin?
4. What does it mean to be
courageous?
5. How does a community create
social outcasts?
6. Why is it important to learn to
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 READING OUTCOMES 
Character Analysis:
Students will analyze the character’s law of
life and the impact. (Interest)
Empathy Paper:
Students will choose a character they have
empathy with and illustrate the points of
empathy you share with the character.
(interest)
Dialectical Journals:
Students will write three dialectical journals,
topics will be given. (readiness)
Group Project:
Students will choose a topic and create a
project to be presented to the class about the
given topic. (Learning Profile)
Standards-based Essential Skills & Concepts to
be Targeted Throughout the Unit
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Pre-Instructional Assessment based on
interest and readiness.
Reading Quizzes
Notebooks Organization
Vocabulary Development
Grammar Development
Event Map
Character Map
Socratic Seminar:
Jigsaw activity: Great Depression
(Readiness)
 WRITING OUTCOMES 
Enduring Understandings:
1. Reading literature from various
time periods and cultures builds
an understanding of the many
aspects of human experience.
2. The structure of language
influences comprehension and
fluency.
3. Understanding a text’s structure
helps a reader better understand
its meaning.
4. An author’s word choices are not
accidental.
5. Audience and purpose influence
the se of literary techniques.
 Formative Assessments (Unit) 
Themes:
How Students will Demonstrate
Their Understanding
 Summative Assessment (End of the Unit) 
Theme, Enduring
Understandings &
Essential Questions
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Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support
analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as
inferences drawn from the text.
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and
analyze in detail its development over the course of
the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
Analyze how complex characters develop over the
course of a text, interact with other characters, and
advance the plot or develop the theme.
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they
are used in the text; analyze the cumulative impact of
specific word choices on meaning and tone.
Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to
structure a text, order events within it, and
manipulate time create such effects as mystery,
tension, or surprise.
Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific
claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is
valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient;
identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.
Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of
substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and
relevant and sufficient evidence.
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the
development, organization, and style are appropriate
to task, purpose, and audience.
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by
planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach, focusing on addressing what is most
significant for a specific purpose and audience.
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce,
publish, and update individual or shared writing
products, taking advantage of technology's capacity
to link to other information and to display
information flexibly and dynamically.
Strategies or Best Practices Used
to Explicitly Teach Skills &
Concepts
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Literary Glossary
Conversations Across Time (with
Essential Questions)
Event Map
Character Map
Interactive Notebooks (Interest)
Collaborative Annotation
(Readiness)
Readers’ Bookmarks
Instructional Resources
Anchor Text(s):
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper
Lee
Poetry:
Short Stories:
The Lesson by Bambara
The Way We Lie by Ericsson
Drama:
Nonfiction:
Momma, the dentist, and me by
Angelou
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Writing activities
o Sentence Beginnings
o Voice
o Rhetorical Strategies
o 6 Traits of Writing
o ABC Thesis
o Essay Structure
o Using appeals
o Peer Revision (readiness)
o Prewriting Tools
o Revision & Edit
All final drafts are published at
teenink.com
The Ways of Meeting Oppression
by MLK
Out of Panic--Self-Reliance by
Bloom
Rights of Man by Paine
A Word’s Meaning Can Often
Depend on Who Says It by Naylor
Other:
“Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday
PBS Video “Scottsboro Trial”
To Kill a Mockingbird Unit Curriculum Map
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*** All Highlighted pieces are new DI lessons
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SPEAKING & LISTENING OUTCOMES 
7.
walk in another person’s shoes
before judging them?
What is the difference between
racism and prejudice?
How do the difficult, most
challenging moments in one’s
life be the catalyst for the
greatest of understandings?
What is Justice?
How is information power?
How is language power?
How will the geographical and
historical setting affect the
characters in To Kill a
Mockingbird?
How do the prejudices of a
culture affect the people living
within that setting?
How will your understanding of
the historical period enhance
your reading of the book, To Kill
a Mockingbird?
How does the point of view of a
text affect the presentation of
ideas?
Why does an author make use of
repetition of symbolic images in
a text?
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Students will listen, speak, read, and write for
information and understanding.
Students will relate texts and performances to their
own lives; and develop an understanding of the
diverse social, historical, and cultural dimensions the
texts and performances represent.
Students will listen, speak, read, and write for critical
analysis and evaluation.
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Socratic Seminar
Cooperative Learning Groups
Class Discussion
Shoe Activity
Think-Pair-Share