Students in Ms. Yanuszeski’s Language Arts classes are writing comparison essays on Civil Rights leaders and activists.  All students are working in small groups or with a partner to draw conclusions from the text, find evidence to support that conclusion, and then explain what the evidence means in their own words.

One class is comparing “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a speech by Malcolm X titled, “The Ballot or the Bullet.”  Students are finding evidence to support similarities and differences on the target audience, purpose, and unique perspective.

Another class is comparing the lives of Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin.  Both women were arrested for refusing to give up their seats to a white passenger in segregated Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.  Students are finding similarities and differences in the personality, arrest experience, and legacy of each individual.