Social Studies: Mapping out a Route to Freedom
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt Interdisciplinary Unit
By Cynthia Weeden

Overview

Designed to focus on geography and mapping, this lesson asks students to create their own map and discover the importance of using landmarks as a guide. This lesson should be given after the students have read the book.

Time Required

One class period

Materials Needed

• Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
• List of ways slaves communicated while escaping
• Paper
• Pencil

Anticipatory Set

Ask students if anyone has ever traveled out of state by car. Did they use a map to get there? Then, discuss features of maps and what makes them useful. Then, ask students if they’ve ever been asked to give directions to a location? Was it easy or hard to do? Inform them that slaves used landmarks to help them travel the Underground Railroad. Tell students that, today, they will get a chance to create a map based on other people’s input.

Procedures

1. Talk with students about pages 13-18 of Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, where Clara begins to imagine seeing a map and thinks of sewing a quilt and using the colors and stitching as a map. To sew the quilt as a map, Clara begins to interview people about where the fields, rivers, etc. are. Ask students to list ways in which people communicated to express the terrain to Clara.



2. Have students take out paper or a notebook. They will probably need to have something to write on for a hard surface.



3. Ask each student to pick a starting place and destination within the school and write this at the top of his/her paper.



4. Have students list, in the margin, ten classmates to interview.



5. At the signal, have students get up and interview each other on how to get to their destinations using only landmarks and approximating distances.



6. After enough time has passed, have students sit down and look over their information.



7. Hand out a piece of plain white paper and tell the students to draw their route based on what their classmates said. How clear does the map look according to what the other classmates have said?



8. Have the students switch maps with each other and gather in small groups. Then have the groups try to get to the destinations on the maps based on what is written.



9. Have students share their findings. Were they successful? What would have helped them? Tell students to write three suggestions of what would have made them more successful on their interview sheet.



10. Then, have students staple their interviews and maps together.



11. Closure: Discuss with students why Clara would not have used a paper map. How would their journeys across campus have been more difficult had they not been familiar with the area? Why would slaves like Clara take the risk of going into an unfamiliar world? What conclusions can you draw about slavery based on her willingness to take these risks?

Assessment

Grade students on how well their maps match their interviews. Also, evaluate their suggestions for being more successful.

For Older Students

1. Have students create a travel log as they pretend to travel from a specific city in the South to Canada. They can use an atlas, and the Underground Railroad map on this site.



2. Tell students to mark their routes and record the lengths of their trips by miles, including both the pitfalls and successes.



3. Have students use http://www.mapquest.com or yahoo maps and compare their journeys, mostly on foot, to the drive time of today.

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