Learning Compassion from a Nonfiction Text
Grade
Grade 4
UNIT
6
•
Compassion
In Unit 6, Lesson 2, “Learning Compassion from a Nonfiction Text,” students will learn an example of compassion from the life of a real person. Additionally, students will practice their reading comprehension skills by hearing a read aloud. Finally, students will create their own sentences that demonstrate their reading comprehension and share their sentences with a partner.
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SUGGESTED TIME:
20 minutes
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
- Hear a read aloud to support reading comprehension
- Demonstrate understanding of the main idea of a nonfiction text
- Compose sentences that demonstrate comprehension of the word compassion
- Demonstrate understanding of standard English sentence structure and grammar
- Practice reading and conversation skills by sharing sentences with classmates
REQUIRED MATERIALS:
- Video: Mary McLeod Bethune, Civil Rights Activist from Biography (~3 min)
- Prohuman Grade 4 Unit 6 Worksheet 2: Learning Compassion from a Nonfiction Text
VOCABULARY:
- Compassion: I see when others are hurt or need help, and I try to help them.
ELA COMMON CORE STANDARDS MET
CHARACTER AND SOCIAL EMOTIONAL (CSED) NATIONAL STANDARDS MET
LESSON PROCEDURE
- Tell students that today they will learn about an important person in American history who showed compassion.
- Without providing any context, show students this picture from Florida Memory, the Library and State Archives of Florida.
- Ask students what they wonder about when they see this picture.
- Tell students that this picture was taken around 1911. It is of Mary McLeod Bethune with a line of students from the school she founded, in Daytona, Florida. She started the school in 1904.
- Let’s learn more about Mary McLeod Bethune. Play video: Mary McLeod Bethune, Civil Rights Activist from Biography (~3 min)
- Have students read the nonfiction text on their worksheets quietly to themselves. Circle the room to support the students.
- Have students write the answers to the worksheet questions.
- Have students share their answers with a partner.
GRADE 4 UNIT 6 WORKSHEET 2: LEARNING COMPASSION FROM A NONFICTION TEXT
Compassion: I see when others are hurt or need help, and I try to help them.
NONFICTION TEXT: MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE’S COMPASSION
Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875 in South Carolina to Samuel and Patsy, who had been enslaved. After the Civil War, her mother worked for her former owner until she could buy the land on which the family grew cotton. By age nine, Mary could pick 250 pounds of cotton a day.
Mary graduated in 1894 from the Scotia Seminary, a boarding school in North Carolina. Then she became a teacher. She was compassionate and wanted to help others by teaching and opening a new school. In 1904, Mary opened a boarding school in Florida called the Daytona Beach Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. This school became a college and merged with the all-male Cookman Institute to form Bethune-Cookman College. The college she founded set standards for today’s black colleges.
Mary worked for racial and gender equality. She founded many groups and led voter registration drives after women gained the vote in 1920. In 1924, Mary was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. In 1936, she became the highest-ranking African American woman in government when President Franklin Roosevelt named her director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. In 1940, Mary became vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a position she held for the rest of her life.
Honored with many awards, Mary was celebrated with a statue in Washington DC in 1974 and a postage stamp in 1985. In 2002, Mary became the first African American to have a statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. Mary was one of the most important black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders, and government officials of the twentieth century.
Source: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune
ACTIVITY:
- How did Mary show compassion?
- Name one thing Mary did that you find most interesting and explain why.
- Why is it important for everyone to serve and contribute to their family, school, community, nation, and globally?
- What is one way that you can show compassion?
- What is one way that you can show compassion?
Prohuman K-12 Curriculum © 2025 by Prohuman Foundation is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.
To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/