Cen%@*%hip

Article Title: From Orwell to ‘Little Mermaid,’ Kuwait Steps Up Book Banning by Rod Norland.

Link to Article: rebrand.ly/Censorship

Here are excerpts from the article itself…

• “In Kuwait, over the past five years only 4,300 books were banned out of 208,000 books — that means only 2 percent are banned and 98 percent are approved,” he said. “Some books are being banned in the U.S., Europe, Beirut and other countries, too.”
• In the past 11 months, he said, 3,600 books were approved by censors, while 700 were banned.
• Bans have for the first time extended to many international books and reference books already on Kuwaiti shelves, at least in part because of parliamentary pressure, critics say.

Activity: Censorship with a blacked out article

Strategy: Predictions

1. Each student will receive a printed out version of the article, however, the article will be marked up and blacked out. Censoring crucial information to understand what the article is about. They will be instructed to read the article.
2. Students will than put themselves into groups of 4 making predictions and asking questions about the missing information. The group predictions of the article will be written on the whiteboard in the front of the classroom.
3. Students will stay in there groups and the educator will pass out an uncensored article to each group. The group will than read the article and reflect back on the predictions and questions that they had come across.
4. The teacher will than gather up the students to end the lesson with a group discussion about censorship. Before the students are allowed to leave they must write down a question that they want to focus on pertaining to censorship.
5. The questions will turn into talking points throughout the unit and keep the teacher on task with what the students want to know while teaching what the school wants the students to know.

Standards: Montana Reading Standards for Informational Text Grade 4

• Determine the main idea of a text; explain how it is supported by key details; and summarize the text.

Grand Challenge: Valuing World Cultures

• To deepen our understanding of significant global political and historic patterns and events and their impact on our ecology and environment.