Lesson Title:
Violence versus Nonviolence

Grade Level:
Grade One Lesson 6

Unit of Study:
A Child’s Place in Time and Space

History-Social Science Standard:
1.6   Students understand basic economic concepts and the role of individual choice in a free-market economy.

Correlation to K-8 California Adopted Textbooks:
Harcourt Brace:  A Child’s Place. Unit 3:  Living in a Community.
McGraw-Hill: My World. Unit 3:  People at work.   

Setting the Context:
Teacher reads stories or just outlines the lives and nonviolent ways of Martin Luther King Jr., Ph.D., Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and so on.

Focus Question:
Why would one choose nonviolent methods versus violent methods to create change and reach a predetermined goal in a free-market economy? 

Expected Learning Outcomes:
Students will see how violence does not help reach a given goal and how nonviolence and unity works better.  Students will explain why it is better to choose nonviolence over violence.

Assessment:
Students will participate as a class in an activity that will show how a goal is hard to meet with violence and easy to accomplish with nonviolence and unity.  Students discuss as a class what they learned and then use pictures and words to convey violence versus nonviolence.  The teacher looks for imagery and words that convey the main concepts of the lesson.  These pages can be bound into a book title NonViolence vs. Violence that the entire classroom can enjoy.

Key Concepts: 
An individual's choice can cause change in the free-market as well as the world around us.
César E. Chávez and others show us how we can use nonviolent choices to create change.

Essential Vocabulary:
violence
nonviolence
Goal
Versus
Quote
Chaos
Order
Empowerment
Unity
Cause
Effect

Primary Sources:
Nonviolence quote by César E. Chávez
“But in seeking social change, I am positive nonviolence is the way, morally and tactically, especially in our society where those in power resort to clubs, tear gas, and guns.”  (Levy, César Chávez Autobiography of La Causa pg. 5).

Visuals: 
Pictures of César E. Chávez and others engaged in nonviolent change; picture 1, picture 2.  See the document center, pictures

Procedure

Motivation: 
Teacher takes the class outside to a field with 4 balls such as soccer balls.  Teacher has class line up behind balls facing a target such as a goal net or the space between two cones.  Teacher tells students that the goal is to get the ball into the target.  The teacher states that the students are really mad at the balls, and that they don’t care if they hurt the ball they just want to get it into the goal.  It is OK to use violence to get to their goal.  As students kick, teacher points out that most balls go wild out of control and miss the goal.  Students line up and are told to be gentle.  This time they should see that it is easy to reach their goal by using nonviolent methods. 

Making Connections: 
The teacher reads the quote by César E. Chávez (see primary sources) and leads a discussion on it.  Students are asked to recall a time when someone wanted something and used violence towards them.  Did that person get what they wanted?  Was that person well liked for doing it?  Students share in small groups.  They then come up with a way that the person could have gotten what they wanted by using nonviolent ways.

Vocabulary Activities:
Students play charades acting out the vocabulary words and having others guess it.

Guided Instruction: 
Students are given a large sheet of construction paper where they first write down ways to get their lunch.  The teacher may have to offer alternative “mean” methods of obtaining the lunch.  Students then fold it to create two equal sized panels.  Referring to what they previously wrote, students draw a mean way of getting their lunch on one side of the panel and on the other panel they draw a nonviolent way.

The teacher then asks the following questions

1)	Which method goes best with the quote that was read? 
2)	Which way do you think César E. Chávez would have used and why?  

Students then write a sentence to match the nonviolent method such as “Ask a person to share their lunch.”