What was Slavery in America?
Young Adult Literature and the History of Slavery Unit
By Amy Lockhart

Overview

Before meeting with the ninth grade students, the third-fifth grade students will need to build their background knowledge on slavery through literature and discussion. This lesson provides collaborative activities to expand their knowledge of slavery.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• Become familiar with the history of slavery through the reading of literature.
• Develop a mini-group presentation about some of the facts they learned.
• Write in a Slavery Journal (in first person) about a day in their life as a slave. These entries will include facts and/or information from the literature.

Skills Attained

Students will be able to:

• Write from a different person’s point of view
• Read and respond to literature (critical thinking and higher order thinking skills)

Time Required

This lesson takes 2-3 days.

Materials Needed

• Copies of:


• The Last Slave House
• Now Let Me Fly
• Nettie’s Trip South, Many Thousand Gone
• Dear America series books.


• Slavery Journal (consisting of a packet made of three-five pages of loose leaf notebook paper)



• KWL Chart

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

1. Day One: Ask students, as a large group, to provide their ideas and thoughts on slavery. You could use a K (what I think I KNOW) W (what I WANT to know) L (what I LEARNED) chart and save the L column as a mini-assessment at the end of the unit (below).



2. Day Two: Read a short narrative of a slave’s life.. Ask student what their reactions are.

Procedures

1. On the first day, select parts of the book Now Let Me Fly to the class. You could follow this by reading the short introduction on pages five-six from the book Many Thousand Gone.



2. On the second day, you could include an additional set of readings and discussions in small groups on the following pages of the book The Last Slave House:


• Page 22-23
• Page 34-35
• Page 36-37
• Page 54-55


3. Divide the class into four small groups. Each group will use information from the Last Slave House book to become the "experts" on the sections they read. They can role-play or present the information in another creative way to the rest of the class.



4. At the conclusion of each day’s lesson, have the students write a personal reflection about some of the new information they learned from the readings. Tell them that this doesn’t have to be lengthy; rather, it should include a deeper analysis of the new knowledge.



5. Additionally, each student will write a diary entry in the first person as though he/she were a slave on a southern plantation.


**(ADDITIONAL READING)

6. Nettie’s Trip South is a story told from the perspective of a young white girl from the north. What did she see on her trip? How do you think she felt differently from the beginning of the trip to the end?



7. In another diary entry, write as though you are a young white girl/boy and you have a slave at your home. You have developed a close friendship with the slave. Describe how this relationship affects you.

Assessment

Slavery Bibliography for Grades Three-Five

Picture Books

• Many Thousand Gone by Virginia Hamilton
• Nettie’s Trip South by Ann Turner
• Now Let Me Fly by Dolores Johnson
• The Last Safe House by Barbara Greenwood
• Under the Quilt of Night by Deborah Hopkinson and James E. Ransome

Chapter Books

• Flying Free: Corey’s Underground Railroad Diary by Sharon Dennis Wythe
• Freedom’s Wing: Corey’s Underground Railroad Diary by Sharon Dennis Wythe

Amy Lockhart teaches Fifth Grade Language Arts and Social Studies at Price Laboratory School at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa.

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