Making Connections: Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility in Texts

Remember from Grade 3

In Grade 3 you made text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world connections, and you shared thoughts and feelings about ideas like diversity, inclusion and belonging.

In Grade 4 you will explain how each connection deepens your understanding, and how a text addresses a big topic: what message or insight it gives.

Hook: A wall or a door?

Imagine your friends are playing a game in a room at the top of a flight of stairs, and you can't climb stairs. For you, the stairs are a wall. Now imagine someone adds a ramp or an elevator. The wall becomes a door!

Many texts are about walls and doors like this: barriers that keep people out, and the changes that let everyone in.

Read 1: The Path to the Rink

Every February, Lakeview School held its Winter Carnival at the outdoor rink in the park. Sam couldn't wait. Sam uses a wheelchair and loves hockey more than anything.

But on carnival morning, the path from the school to the rink was buried under deep snow. Sam's wheels sank. He pushed and pushed, then stopped. His friends were already lacing their skates.

"Go ahead," he told his friend Leila. "I'll watch from the window."

Leila didn't go. She looked at the path. Then she ran to the school office. Ten minutes later, the caretaker, Mr. Bui, was clearing the path with the snowblower, and half of Sam's class was shovelling the edges.

That afternoon, the class wrote a letter to the town council. Please clear the park path every time it snows, so everyone can get to the rink. Two weeks later, the town wrote back: they would clear the path after every snowfall, and the community centre would start a sledge hockey program, where players sit on sledges and push themselves across the ice with two short sticks.

On the first Saturday of sledge hockey, Sam scored. So did Leila. She'd never sat on a sledge before, and she fell over four times.

Three kinds of connections, explained

A strong connection doesn't just say That reminds me of.... It explains how it helps you understand.

• Text-to-self (my knowledge and lived experiences): I broke my leg last year and used crutches. Snowy sidewalks were really hard. That helps me understand why Sam stopped and felt left out.
• Text-to-text: In another book, a girl who is Deaf teaches her class sign language. Both texts show that small changes can include everyone.
• Text-to-world: In my town, some buildings have automatic doors and ramps. That helps me see that accessibility is a real-world issue, not just a story.

Read 2: Viola Desmond

Viola Desmond was a Black businesswoman in Nova Scotia. She ran a beauty salon and opened a school to train beauticians.

In 1946, Viola went to a movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She sat in a seat on the main floor. She was told that the main floor was only for white customers, and that Black customers had to sit in the balcony. That was unfair, and Viola refused to move.

She was arrested, kept in jail overnight, and fined. Viola fought the unfair treatment in court, but she lost. Still, her courage inspired other people to keep working for equal rights in Canada.

Many years later, in 2010, the government of Nova Scotia officially pardoned her and apologized. In 2018, Viola Desmond's portrait appeared on Canada's $10 bill.