The Chicago Public Schools’ Character Education curriculum is a wonderful tool which teachers can use daily to help reinforce important values throughout the lives of children.  One of the most difficult values to teach, mostly because it takes a lifetime to acquire, is responsibility.  Because responsibility is more difficult to identify, define, and describe than other values outlined by the Character Education Curriculum, such as honesty, or friendship, I have chosen this concept to be the theme of this Literature-based unit.  The purpose of this unit is to use the stories of Leo Lionni to illustrate the meaning of responsibility, and to promote an awareness and understanding of this concept as being something that we can all strive for, because we can manifest it in so many unique and individual ways.
    Since the images of talking animals, and the impressions of an imaginary world are so similar to the images a child creates in his or her own mind,  the stories written and illustrated by Leo Lionni will serve to illustrate reality and survival in a manner that children are very familiar with. Through the sub-themes of survival, living as an orphan, and expressing hopes and dreams, students will better understand the abstract nature of responsibility. Lionni’s stories will convey not only the fact that life must lived, but also that we live with one another in an interactive world which makes us responsible not only toward each other, but also toward ourselves.  The pressures of everyday life will naturally force us to respond in some way or through some action that will be for the good of ourselves,  and others, hence the term responsibility.
     The overall theme of responsibility, as expressed through the creations of Lionni’s animal characters, will serve as the springboard for enhancing literacy development through reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities.  These literacy components also contain the levels of operation that will help to reinforce the learning of not only the concept of responsibility, but also the needed skills in the Language Arts curriculum.  The skill lessons will be flexible, and derived from the needs of our individual children.  The levels of representation will be achieved through the use of real classroom pets, symbols such as toys, and signs for the concept board which include pictures with labels, and descriptive words.

     The second graders in our classroom range in age from 6 ½ years to nine years old.  About one half of the children are low income, while the rest are middle to lower-middle income, based on lunch applications. Usually children who transfer may need time to adjust to a new environment and evaluated for skills in all content areas. At least
one student speaks no English, and the native language is Polish, eight children are Polish bilingual, and five are Spanish bilingual.  Over half the class speak fluent English, while only three or four children speak English with a strong Ebonic dialect.  There are about 13 girls and 11 boys in this class, and they love working in groups which include both boys and girls! They are friendly and talkative children who love to make new friends.
    The school, Oriole Park Elementary School, is a small school (375 students) in a northwest side neighborhood. There are 5 buses from the Austin area, Irving & Kimball,
north of the expressway, and Cicero & North Ave. Many of the neighborhood children are Polish, Asian, and Middle Eastern.     They have various religious cultures, family diversity, and languages spoken at home.  The kinds of special needs have ranged from Tourettes’ Syndrome, severe peanut allergies, learning disabilities in processing skills, attention deficit disorder, behavior disorders, vision and hearing disabilities, and speech impairments. There are pullout programs for the children, and adjustments to the lesson plans to accommodate these special needs.

     Previous writing samples, IRI results, spelling and grammar tests, journal entries, drawings with captions, listening and speaking checklists, observations, group interaction and participation, and IOWA scores will all be considered when the unit’s skills instruction is planned.  The instruction, which focuses on word analysis, meaning and recognition, phonics skills, and comprehension acuity, will include different activities that will enhance this particular classroom’s needs.
 Final Assessments can be taken from Appendix (skills worksheets), Accelerated Reader Program (Level 1 Comprehension), Portfolio Assessments (Learning Centers), Observations, Writing Rubrics, Scored Interactive Computer Quizzes, Comprehension Questions (see Lesson Plans), Response Journals, and final IRI.