In this lesson students will learn new vocabulary words and explore important civil rights themes by reading the book “All the Way to the Top” by Annette Bay Pimentel. “All the Way to the Top” tells the childhood story of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, who climbed all the way to the top of the stairs of the US capitol in 1990 to encourage congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Jennifer has cerebral palsy and became famous for the photos taken of her while climbing the stairs without a wheelchair at just 8 years old. The book tells the story from her perspective and covers how she felt she was not treated equally in her community and how she and other activist worked to get the ADA passed.

Image description: Cover artwork for “All the Way to the Top”

This lesson will help students to analyze the theme of a poem. Students will compare their understanding of how they view disability before and after reading the poem. Students will compare the message and theme of the poem and contrast the bird in the poem to the life of a person with a disability.

Image Description: Chickadee sitting in a baseball hat

In this lesson, students will consider what accommodations they can make in order to be more inclusive of their peers with disabilities.

Image description: Photo of cake, birthday hats and Happy Birthday banner

In this lesson, students complete grade-appropriate math problems using facts and figures from Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion World Tour. Students will examine mathematical problems evolving out of the day-to-day challenges of Rick Hansen’s Man In Motion World Tour. Students will apply multiplication and division skills to real-life math problems. Students will apply conversion skills to real-life math problems.

Image Description: Logo of Rick Hansen Foundation.

Including coloring pages and artwork in lessons (some of these allow you to use as clip art) that includes disability representation furthers the goal of regularizing disability by seeing it and offering opportunities to learn and ask questions.

Image Description: small images of the coloring books on a yellow background

In this text, students will learn about how video games are being adapted to meet the needs of players with disabilities. Students will practice analyzing text structures. They will understand how paragraphs build on one another and how authors organize their writing using specific text structures such as subheadings.

Image Description: Logo of CommonLit which looks like an open book

As our friends from Engaging America state, “Primary sources … can provide entry points and deepen exploration into historical events. Primary sources add immediacy, such as the faces in a photograph, the emotional tone of a drawing or song, or the complex look of a handwritten document. Documents from multiple points of view can illuminate conflicting ideas and events. Varied media, including maps, oral histories, published reports, and graphs offer many options for connection and investigation”.

We share these collections or primary sources as tools to continue introducing disability into the conversation from natural perspectives, using disabled people to tell their own stories whenever possible.

Image Description: Article from Dallas Times Herald, Wednesday, January 14, 1986 in section “Community Close-Up” titled “Police on sidewalk wheelchair ramps changed”
Full image description can be found at: https://adaptmuseum.net/gallery/picture.php?/451/category/16

Portrait of the Whole Person is a curriculum for elementary school students designed to teach students how disability rights fit into the broader civil rights movement, to perceive disability as a reflection of societal views of differences, and to treat people with disabilities with respect and dignity. It contains four distinct lesson plans comprised of three in-class instruction lesson plans and one lesson plan governing the research and writing of a biographical sketch and creation of a portrait of a notable person with a disability. It is also complete with a graphic organizer, rubrics, a power point, and a list of references students can use for research.

Image Description: Disability Rights Washington logo with “Portrait of a Whole Person Curriculum Overview” written below and drawings of 3 different people in colored pencil.

Students will identify personal similarities and differences between peers.  Students will listen to read/listen to “Different… A Great Thing to Be” and identify rhyming words.  After the lesson, students will write a poem about being different. 

Image Description: cover of the book "Different: A Great Thing to Be!" includes an illustration of a girl with long brown hair holding flowers. Her eyes are closed and she's wearing glasses.

Using the book "We Want to Go to School," students will learn about the segregation of students with disabilities in the school setting. They will learn about the barriers that prevented students from attending school and the progression and processes to challenge and remove those barriers.

Image Description: Cover of We Want to Go to School! The Fight for Disability Rights by Maryann Cocoa-Leffler & Janine Leffler. The cover artwork shows five children behind a table that has papers and a gavel on it.

In this lesson students will read a 2-page graphic novel format story about the Gang of 19 and “We Will Ride” action, and how they fought for equal rights for the disabled.

Image Description: Graphic Novel cover showing protesters in purple black and off white on a green background with the title “Colorful History Comics #31 We Will Ride” underneath the comic.

Students or teachers read or watch “Winnie the Witch” by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul and consider how the story relates to the social model of disability.  Students can apply what they learned about the social model, make connections, and identify events in the story where it was used. 

Image Description: cover of the book "Winnie the Witch" which showed Winnie the Witch tripping over a black cat on the stairs.