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"The Glory Field" by Walter Dean Myers Lesson Plan
By Ann Gann
Overview
The focus of this lesson is on conflict, characterization, and the journey motif presented in The Glory Field. Each of the novel's six sections presents a family member whose conflict is directly related to the historical time and whose physical and emotional journeys lead the character to a new level of maturity. Moving from the period of slavery through Jim Crow, this work of literature helps students realize the legacy of slavery in America at a very personal level.
National Curriculum Standards
For a list of standards that this unit addresses, click here.
Time required
- Approximately six-seven days, if the novel is assigned as an outside reading.
- Up to three weeks, if students read the novel and do activities in the class. There are six sections:
- Introduction (5 pages)
- March 1864 (51 pages)
- April 1900 (46 pages)
- May 1930 (58 pages)
- January 1964 (64 pages)
- August 1994 (69 pages)
The book makes it easy for both assigned reading and group activities.
Materials
- The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers
- Activities Handout and Graphic Organizer
The Lesson
Anticipatory Set
Use either of these activities to introduce the novel or assign Activity A as homework and use Activity B or C in class.
Activity A
- Have students create a map of the journey their life. (Note: If you take 10-15 minutes in class to model the journey of your life on either the blackboard or overhead, students will have a visual to help them as they work on their life map.)
- Tell students to draw, on a blank, horizontal sheet of paper, a winding road with the beginning as their date of birth and the ending as the present date.
- Along the road, have the students record eight to ten (number can vary) important facts about their lives. These facts could include: places lived, schools attended, births/deaths, honors/awards, team events--anything that is important to them. Allow them to add artwork to the map, like a sketch of a schoolhouse.
- Then, ask the students to complete a "life map" for another family member of a previous generation: mother or father, grandparent, aunt or uncle. The students could complete two older generation maps. They could have a dialogue with a parent and then a grandparent to prepare them for the novel.
- Once they finish the maps, have them write a reaction to the lives the maps represent. What similarities and differences do they find? Is there a common trait shared by the generations: active in sports, win spelling bees, farmers, teachers, etc.
- Have the students share comments about the activity and/or their lives, then lead into the novel by telling the students that The Glory Field is a novel about one family's journey of life through many generations.
Activity B
- Ask students to mentally role-play being a young person under the age of ten who is bound in a slave ship from Africa to America in 1753.
- Have the students write about this experience as they imagine it would happen. They may include their capture, people and life on board the ship (eating, sleeping, bathing), the duration of the journey, the weather, etc.
- Allow 10-15 minutes for them to write, then ask for volunteers to share their stories.
- Now, have students read in class the first four pages of the book that recounts Muhammad Bilal's journey to America. What similarities do they find in their account and that of Muhammad?
Activity C
- Ask students to read, in class, the first four pages of the book that recounts Muhammad Bilal's journey to America.
- Then, ask students to predict Muhammad's life after he is sold as a slave either through a brief writing response or through an oral sharing with someone writing the ideas on the board. They can include where he lived, what work he did, what kind of a family life he had, how many children, grandchildren he had, etc. While this information is not really given in the novel, their ideas will be very close to the life that is portrayed in the section titled "March 1864, Live Oaks Plantation, Curry Island, South Carolina." Students will discover whether their ideas of slave life are close to the life Myers presents in the novel.
Procedures
- After the Anticipatory Set, establish the reading of the novel so that it fits into your teaching schedule. Give students a copy of the Activities Handout. Have students write down the dates for the completed reading of each section. Also assign quizzes at this time.
- Teacher Note: This handout is optional. The research topics on this handout are broad to allow students to do preliminary research, but some specific topics are provided in the Interdisciplinary Links section.
- Give each student a copy of the Graphic Organizer. Students should complete the Graphic Organizer as they finish reading the accompanying section and prepare for class discussion and possible quiz.
- Teacher Note: The Graphic Organizer has two organizers for the first section. One can be used as an example if needed, and the other is blank for the students to complete. Or, you can remove some of the information on the example organizer and allow students to complete the activity. Review the terms of motif, conflict, and characterization, if needed.
- Have students participate in class discussions over each section on assigned dates.
- Have students turn in their final projects, and then you can give your final assessments.
Assessment
You can assess students' work using the tools/methods below:
- Quizzes and Objective Test: You can check for reading comprehension and plot structure.
- Completed Graphic Organizer and Vocabulary List
- Essay (on Activities Handout): Assign or let students choose from the following:
- Personal Essay that relates a lesson they learned from an incident that occurred to them.
- A Character Sketch for one of the main characters in the novel.
- Cause and Effect Essay that takes a current event and shows how that event has affected their lives.
- Oral Presentation (on Activities Handout): You can have students select one of the research topics from the History Interdisciplinary Links, research the topic, and orally present the information to the class, using a visual aid such as a poster, diorama, scrapbook, or PowerPoint presentation. Students could work together to combine music, art, and pictures that depict the eras presented in this novel: Colonial Period, Civil War, Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movement, and Present Day.
- Family Research: Ask students to research the genealogy of their maternal or paternal family as far back as possible. Have them include names, dates, pictures, and information about their family members. In this activity, students focus on finding common traits/professions that have transcended the generations: soldiers, politicians, teachers, machinists, farmers, businessmen etc. They can present their findings in a variety of ways, including a PowerPoint presentation, scrapbook, "This is Your Life" skit, etc.
- Character Essay on Muhammad Bilal: Even though Muhammad Bilal's life on Curry Island is not presented in the novel, his effect on his family is documented through the actions of his descendants. Have students write an essay in which they defend their selection of three or four adjectives that they believe Muhammad Bilal possessed by citing events in the novel and the different characters' responses to the hardships in their lives.
Related Works
- War Comes to Willy Freeman by Christopher Collier, James Lincoln Collier. A free 13-year-old black girl in Connecticut is caught up in the horror of the Revolutionary War and the danger of being returned to slavery when her father is killed by the British and her mother disappears.
- North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad by Katherine Ayers. This story is told through the journal entries of 16-year-old Lucinda Spencer, who lives in an Ohio village in 1851. Her family operates a safe house on the Underground Railroad.
- To Be a Slave by Julius Lester. This is a compilation of the reminiscences of slaves and ex-slaves about their experiences, from their leaving Africa through the Civil War and into the early 20th century.
- Roots by Alex Haley. This epic begins with a birth in 1750, in an African village; it ends seven generations later and chronicles the history of the author's family.
Interdisciplinary Links
- Art: Have students research famous African-American artists and present their works depicting the different periods of African-American history in the United States.
- Geography: Have students research the slave trade: the goods moved on a slave trade route; the African countries involved; the ocean routes traveled; the number of years this trade existed and the number of slaves captured during those years; and the culture of one of the African countries involved in this trade. Then, give the students a blank world map and have them plot Bilal's journey from Africa to South Carolina. They could extend the activity by tracing the journey from the island to Chicago and from the island to New York City.
- Math: In conjunction with the geography activity, students could determine the number of miles the family has traveled.
- History: Since this novel chronicles American history from 1753 to 1994, many research topics are presented in each section:
- July 1753--Research a slave auction, African-American troops in the Civil War.
- March 1864--Compare plantation life of the slaves in the South to the life of the slave in the industrial North.
- April 1900--Research sharecropping, Ku Klux Klan, the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Jim Crow laws at http://www.jimcrowhistory.org
- May 1930--Research The Great Depression, cars of the 1930s, especially the 1930 Jordan.
- January 1964--Research desegregation, especially the admission of blacks to all white colleges, Brown v. Board 1954, Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks.
- August 1994--Research jazz (more topics under music).
- Music: Research:
- Musical genres--jazz, classical.
- Instruments--sitar, cello, sax, flute.
- Musicians--Coltrane, Mozart.
- Places--Apollo Theater.
Web Sites
This lesson was submitted by Ann Gann, an English Teacher in Clinton, Tennessee.
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