4 Text Sets on Forgiveness and Restorative Justice

4 Text Sets and 40+ pages of texts dealing with “Restorative Justice” and Forgiveness!

** More than 25 separate texts included! **

12 - NARRATIVE Texts (Personal accounts of forgiveness)

5 - EXPOSITORY Articles (About victims and perpetrators healing together)

4 - WEBSITES on Restorative Justice (Detailing factual practices/protocols)

2 - POEMS (1 showing the benefits of forgiveness and 1 showing a life of unforgiveness)

3 - ARTISTIC Expressions (1 painting, 1 photo story, 1 quote)

1 - (optional) NOVEL selection from Ch. 14 of Touching Spirit Bear

** PLUS 10+ pages of Supplementary Materials **

2 TEXT ANALYSIS GRIDS to choose from!

1 MAIN IDEA Graphic Organizer

A 2-PAGE LESSON PLAN: “Analyzing Theme across 3 genres of text”

Accompanying lesson materials included:

a) DOUBLE and TRIPLE Venn Diagrams for analyzing texts

b) Group Discussion Sentence Frames for comparing texts

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DETAILS: I use these texts to supplement a Touching Spirit Bear novel study but there are no specific novel references so these texts can be used in any unit! The text sets are designed with a range of Lexile levels in mind and for the harder articles, I have bolded key phrases to assist with student comprehension! Within each text set, students should be able to find a text that suits their reading level. 2 Text Analysis Grids are included for you to choose from (as well as some blank versions of the Double and Triple Venn Diagrams detailed below).

BONUS: In addition to these rich texts, I have included a detailed lesson plan for a comparing/contrasting the “Theme of Forgiveness” across a narrative text, a poem, and (optional) novel selection from Touching Spirit Bear. This is the perfect text set to teach “Theme” and to frontload for Cole and Peter’s journey of forgiveness!

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Detailed information about the Four Text Sets:

- Text Set A: Narrative Texts -

12 Personal Stories: Some written by victims and some written by the perpetrator detailing their own path toward forgiveness (14 total pages).

- Text Set B: Expository Texts -

5 News Articles: written from a third party perspective regarding victims and perpetrators meeting in peace to heal (12 total pages).

- Text Set C: Websites about Restorative Justice Circles -

4 Websites detailing the logistics of Restorative Justice/Circle Justice Meetings. This is extremely helpful in showing the difference between one-on-one forgiveness (in the first two text sets) and an actual court-ordered Restorative Justice Circle (9 total pages).

- Text Set D: Poems and Images -

4 Emotional/Artistic/Poetic reflections showing how issuing forgiveness actually helps to heal yourself (4 pages).

If you like this text set you’ll LOVE some of my other items:

Circle Justice Mock Trial: Students construct persuasive arguments as characters from Touching Spirit Bear!

Recursive Textual Evidence-Based Novel Study for Touching Spirit Bear (BUNDLED!): An amazing novel study focusing on symbolism, conflicts resulting in Cole’s transformation and engaging visual representation of important concepts from the book!

The Mystery of "Slip or Trip?" -- Persuasive Debate Students craft arguments in this murder mystery using strong textual evidence and persuasive techniques.

**THANK YOU to the 3amTeacher for the frames and to Kira Ko for the backgrounds for thumbnails!**