Teaching Through Literature: Citizenship - SLO Classical Academy
Inquire Visit Tour
San Luis Obispo Classical Academy San Luis Obispo Classical Academy

Welcome to Down Home, San Luis Obispo Classical Academy’s blog! We are a classical school offering several options to make our education work for families with infants through high schoolers. Our signature hybrid program, which is part-time classroom and part-time home instruction, provides an engaging education for preschool through middle school (with full time options available). We also have a university model high school. This blog is meant to support and encourage on the home front because, in so many ways, the heart of what happens at SLO Classical Academy happens down home.

Semper discentes—always learning together.
Subscribe to Down Home:
Loading
Categories

Teaching Through Literature: Citizenship

Our Teaching Through Literature series is all about sharing quality books that have been carefully and intentionally selected to correlate with each month’s character trait. Citizenship is our character trait for the month of April and we wanted to share with you an extra special (and extra extensive) list of books that was originally curated for our Wisdom Wonder Blog. This year in our study of American History our students have been learning a lot about the African American experience and this trimester they will be delving into the Civil Rights movement. We thought that it would be helpful to share with you this list of books focusing on Black American culture in correlation with this month’s character trait.

For even more books on citizenship, be sure to check out last year’s Teaching Citizenship Through Literature post.

Read on as our Director of Marketing and Merchandising, Betsi Ashby, introduces the list and explains how the books are chosen.


CITIZENSHIP: Recognizing one’s place in the greater communities (family, school, local and country) through active service and respectful devotion to the community’s members, values and standards.

Catch Phrase: Everyone counts.

Often part of exploring our own citizenship involves learning about (and from!) our community and its members. The power of story in literature is a great way to do this! We have put together a Citizenship book list, sharing stories about Black American culture. We hope the books on this list can be tools in your toolbox as you navigate conversations about racism and cultural awareness with your child(ren).

When choosing literature for our book lists, we use parameters such as beautiful writing, beautiful pictures, an invitation to dialogue with the content, books that help us to think deeply, and content that is developmentally appropriate for its age/audience. The result is a curated list that we are excited to share.

Though this list is lengthy, we do not want it to be overwhelming—we’ve ordered the books by age level (picture books through chapter books) to make it a little easier to peruse. You will notice some authors listed more than once (like Jacqueline Woodson), if you like one of the books from that author, consider exploring their others! We also included a graphic novels category for our adolescent readers.

Little Wonders (Preschool, Junior K, & Kindergarten)

For Ages 0-3+

1 thought on “Teaching Through Literature: Citizenship”

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *