The Tikkun Project
Lesson
1
Defining Poverty and Posing Powerful Questions
Concept
Understanding a complex social issue begins with naming it precisely testing initial assumptions against real narratives and evidence, rather than settling for a first impression.
Focus Question
What are the most helpful indicators of the impact of poverty in the community? What makes a question a powerful question? (This second question is a process/skill question. It drives the Question Sort routine but isn't itself a line of inquiry into poverty.)
Knowledge & Understanding Goals
Language, Strand C (Comprehension), C2 — Comprehension Strategies, Grade 4: Apply comprehension strategies before, during, and after listening to a variety of texts (including narratives about social issues) to understand and clarify meaning, and identify explicit and implied messages.
Language, Strand A (Literacy Connections and Applications), A1 — Transferable Skills, Grade 4: Demonstrate an understanding of how critical thinking supports the formulation of questions that guide an inquiry into a real-world topic.
Thinking & Learning Skills
ATL — Thinking Skills: Generating questions and testing an initial definition against new evidence.
ATL — Research Skills: Formulating and refining questions to guide an inquiry.
Learner Profile: Inquirers (natural curiosity, self-directed inquiry); Open-Minded (willing to revise a definition given new evidence).
Context
Launch lesson of the unit. Before students can propose action on poverty, they need a shared, evidence-informed definition of the problem and a bank of genuine, high-quality questions to drive the inquiry that follows. This lesson establishes the Frayer Diagram and Question Sort as tools that recur through the rest of the unit. Intentionally, no Jewish text is introduced yet students build their own working definition from evidence first; the unit's Core Text (Rambam's Ladder) arrives in the next lesson to test and extend that thinking, not replace it.
Lesson Outline
RECOGNIZING POVERTY USING PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE
Teacher explains: in this unit, students will be learning about the causes and impacts of poverty. To do this, we'll need to define what poverty is and isn't.
In pairs, students write a list of examples of how, when, or where one might notice poverty (e.g., Poverty is not having money to buy a house. You would notice this if you see people living in tents.). Each pair shares their examples with the class, and the class records ideas on a four-quadrant Frayer Diagram: Definition (in students' own words) / Characteristics (what's always true of poverty) / Examples (situations that count) / Non-Examples (situations that don't count, and why not).
CONSIDER TWO (OR MORE) UNIQUE NARRATIVES ABOUT EXPERIENCES OF POVERTY
Choose two short narratives about poverty (storybooks or short age-appropriate videos) that highlight different aspects, ages, or experiences — e.g., Bagels From Benny and Fly Away Home.
After listening, students individually generate a list of questions they have about poverty. As a class, sort the questions into a four-quadrant grid: not interesting & doesn't lead to helpful learning / interesting but doesn't lead to helpful learning / not interesting but leads to helpful learning / interesting & leads to helpful learning.
Throughout the unit, students revise their question list and prioritize finding answers to the most powerful ones.
REVISE THE INITIAL DEFINITION OF POVERTY
Ask students to revise (add, subtract, or modify) the Frayer Diagram, citing the specific evidence or example from the narratives that supports each revision. Record these definitions — they'll be re-evaluated later in the unit.
Notes for Teaching and Evaluation
Frayer Diagram: the Non-Examples quadrant is the one most classes skip, but it's where the real critical thinking happens - e.g., is someone who doesn't have the newest phone experiencing poverty? Students have to argue for the boundary, not just list instances.
Question Sort (TC2): a TC2-style routine for teaching students to distinguish a curious question from a generative one - the same distinction that makes for a good Line of Inquiry. Naming that connection explicitly to students ("we're learning to ask the kind of question that drives real learning - the same kind of question behind the big questions guiding this whole unit") makes the routine transferable rather than a one-off activity.