ACTIVITIES: Web Quest [3 - 4, 60 minutes class periods]
NOTE: This is a post-screening activity and will be most effective if students have had the opportunity to screen the entire film. Please visit POV’s Lending Libraryto virtually “Check Out” a free copy of Through the Night to screen with your students.

Step One: Social Emotional Check-In

Open by asking your students how they are feeling & creating space for them to “share” or “pass” if they are not feeling up to sharing. We suggest you call on students one-by-one and invite them to share and also model what this looks like by sharing first.

To provide a visual aid to help students express themselves, you can look into applications like Mood Meter or Klick Engage (if your school has a subscription). You can also let students know that they can express themselves non-verbally (using hand signals, certain number of fingers, etc. to express how they are showing up today).

Invite students to set their intention and prepare for the day’s lesson by asking them to do the following:

• Turn on your camera (for hybrid/fully remote learning environments)
• Take out your notebook
• Open up today’s assignment
• Get settled in
• Prepare to write down today’s AIM

Step Two: Identify Lesson Objectives and Shared Goals

After viewing Through the Night in its entirety as a whole class, students will work in small groups to engage in a web quest about the documentary in order to gain an appreciation of the complexities of single motherhood in Black and Brown communities.

1. DO NOW: Quick Write -- Critically analyze the following quote:“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children” - Nelson Mandela, 8 May 1995.
2. SHARE OUT: via Turn and Talk or In the chat (for hybrid and fully-remote classes)
3. RECAP key issues that came up in “Through the Night” with students. Chart their responses. Some possible answers may include: Mothering and Motherhood, Childhood and children, Child care and caregivers, Community, Family and extended family structure, Exceptionalism, Meritocracy & Equality, Paid and Unpaid Labor, Income Inequality, Social Justice, Self-care, Race, Capitalism, Gender Equality, and Precarity

Step Three: Mini-Lesson & Modeling Web Quests
NOTE: Web Quests are an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet. (Dodge, 1995). They are based on the ideas of inquiryand constructivismmeant to help students develop their critical-thinking and analysis skills.

BEGIN: This will allow you to model the Web Quests for Students before assigning them to engage in their own.

• Carefully choose four (4) clips from “Through the Night” from the list of eight (8) provided.
• For each clip chosen, create one (1) digital slide that:
  • Answers the specific question(s) asked about that clip. Be sure to identify the clip at the top of your digital slide.
  • In addition, for each clip, create another slide that includes:
    • THREE (3) facts you learned from the clip;
    • Two (2) questions the clip raised for you;
    • One (1) graphic or video that illustrates your understanding of a key issue revealed in “Through The Night.”

Step Four: Individual to Collective Gallery
NOTE: Students should have already seen the film in its entirety. If they have not, review the film and describe the film in full, consider sharing a review of the film for students’ to read and/or the trailer in addition to the Lesson Plan clips. You should determine how many class periods this individual work will require and assign homework if necessary.

Ask students to:

1. Choose one to four (clips) fromThrough The Night that they want to explore in their web quest.
2. Students can choose / be assigned to work independently or in pairs.
3. At this juncture, students have already watched “Through The Night” in its entirety as a whole class.
4. Students watch each clip from the documentary and create a digital slide that answers a certain number of questions that you select (these questions were modified from the POV Discussion Guide for Through the Night):

• What moments in the film resonated with you? Why?
• What moments surprised you the most? What aspects were surprising and why?
• If you could ask anyone in the film a question, whom would it be and what would you ask?
  • Why would you ask that person, specifically? What about that person and your experience made you want to ask them?
• What did you learn from each woman’s story, experience, and their roles as mothers? The more specific the better.
• What did you learn about their mothering journeys? Did it make you reflect or have different feelings and thoughts about the experience of parents?
• Reflecting on your own lived experiences, how did these roles of childcare providers or caregivers impact your life?
• Which communities does the rising cost of childcare impact most directly and in what ways does this film teach us about the experiences of those who are most impacted?
• Was there anything, or anyone, in the film that you see reflected in your city or neighborhood?
  • If yes, in what ways and how did this film deepen your understanding of those in your community?
  • If no, in what ways and how did this film deepen your understanding of yourself and your community in relation to others?

1. Tell students that one slide should be used for each individual question & its corresponding responses
2. You should decide how many slides each student/pair is responsible for as it suits your class schedule.

THE SLIDES: Tell students that each slide should include the following:

• A visual representation that illuminates or reflects their response in some way
• A text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connection on each slide.
  • Text-to-self: connections can be personal connecting lived experiences to the text of the film
  • Text-to-text: connections can connect to past class readings, films, songs, etc, from other courses, that they’ve seen outside of school, and remind them that “text” is not limited to the printed word.
  • Text-to-world: this is a broader category that invites students to connect the film to current events, news, and international issues as well
• One sentence of how this connection deepens their understandings and ability to convey what they understand about the intersection of motherhood, work (you may choose to describe this as “labor” and teach students about different types of “labor” including emotional, spiritual, physical, etc), and community in our society as revealed in Through The Night.

Step Five: Virtual Gallery Walk & Appreciation
After students have completed their slides guide them to add their completed slides to a class digital presentation (Google slides or Prezi will work best as they are online platforms that can be collectively edited). Tell students that these slides will be viewed and discussed by the whole class upon completion as a gallery walk and give students the option (at your discretion) to submit slides with their names on them and/or submit anonymously.

Invite students to add music to their slides if they think that will deepen the messages they are trying to convey. This will add another layer to this multi-modal assignment.

After having reviewed each slide as a class, ask students to write anonymous gratitude letters beginning with the statement “I really appreciated…” and to do it for two slides that stood out to them. Remind them the more specific they can be in what they celebrate, the better.

Share all gratitude statements with the class.

Extensions

Ask students to reflect on their own early childhood experiences. Did they attend day care? If so, what was that like? If not, what was it like to be home during those early years? Who took care of them? What memories stand out for them from that time in their lives? Who were the adults that had the most impact in their lives then?

Research day care funding allocations in New York State.