1.1 Lesson plan: A survivor’s story

By Kristin Post

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• be able to identify elements of contradiction
• practice skills in empathy
• think critically about media, including photographs and oral histories

Students will be able to apply these concepts in a personal reflection.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

1 class period

Materials/Resources

• teacher’s guide
• Documenting the American South oral history excerpts: “What was the shelter like?” and “Elberta’s story”
• transcripts of oral histories
• relevant textbook materials
• photograph of Elberta Hudson’s trailer
• 2–3 portraits or photographs of women (see optional links below, or find your own)
  • Woman with an empty plate. Sandy Island, South Carolina, ca. 1937. Bayard Wootten (photographer). From the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill.
  • Migrant Mother. Nipomo, California, 1936. Dorothea Lange (photographer). From America’s Library.

Technology resources

• internet connection
• speakers
• computer
• headphones (preferred)
• CD player (in lieu of the computer, speakers and internet connection, if you have burned your own CD)

Pre-activities

Teacher preparation

1. Listen to the oral history excerpts linked above.
2. Familiarize yourself with these North Carolina locations: Pender County, White Stocking (where Elberta Hudson’s family lives), and Burgaw. Burgaw Middle School is where Elberta and her family went to escape the floods.
3. Read over the Hurricane Floyd story with information about the community, the storm, the damage, and rebuilding efforts.

Audio preparation

1. If you are playing audio from a CD player, you will not require a computer or speakers. In this case, you will want to download the oral histories ahead of time and burn them onto a CD.
2. If you are playing the oral histories from a computer and speakers in your classroom, you can play it live from the internet or download the audio to your computer and play with a variety of audio players that may be preinstalled on your computer.
3. If you are going to use the computer lab, you do not have to download the oral histories. You and your students can simply listen to the audio excerpts included in this lesson plan. Before you use the computer lab, you should ensure every student will have a computer and headphones. Also, check that the volume on all of the computers is not muted or too loud.

Consult UNC’s Resources for Teachers: Audio Toolkit if you wish to know more about downloading or playing audio files.

Activities

Exercise 1: Thinking about point of view

1. If students aren’t already familiar with the term, give a brief definition of “contradiction.”
2. Hand each student a photocopy (or use the LCD) of one of the two photographs linked above (so every other student will have a different photograph.) Give them a few minutes to jot down characteristics they attribute to the person in the photograph. Ask them to address the following questions. How is this woman feeling? What is she thinking? What is her future going to be like? What was her past like? What is her present like?
3. Discuss the student responses as a class briefly.

Exercise 2: What was the shelter like?

1. Hand out transcripts from the For students section. (Use the printer-friendly version to print.)
2. Using your teacher’s guide, read the flood shelter introductory script aloud to the class.
3. Using your teacher’s guide, discuss answers to the flood shelter preliminary questions.
4. Play the “What was the flood shelter like?” oral history excerpt. Running time: 29 seconds.
5. Using your teacher’s guide, discuss answers to the flood shelter follow-up questions.

Exercise 3: Elberta’s story

Part 1

1. Using your teacher’s guide, read the humor moment introductory script aloud to the class.
2. Using your teacher’s guide, discuss answers to the humor moment preliminary questions.
3. Play the “Elberta’s story” oral history excerpt. Running time: 1 minute 17 seconds.
4. Using your teacher’s guide, discuss answers to the humor moment follow-up questions.

Part 2

5. Using your teacher’s guide, read the humor moment introductory script aloud to the class a second time.
6. Play the “Elberta’s story” oral history excerpt again. Running time: 1 minute 17 seconds.
7. You may consider stopping the oral history halfway thorough, where Elberta says “the tears just came.” Ask the class what kind of tears she experienced, and what makes her story contradictory. Continue playing the rest of the excerpt.
8. Using your teacher’s guide, discuss again the answers to the humor moment follow-up questions.
9. Relate this audio excerpt to the photographs you passed out at the beginning of class. Ask the students to think about the photographs in a different way. They can write a paragraph about the same photograph, creating a different story than they did at the beginning of class.

Assessment

Students will be assessed based on their comprehension of contradiction as demonstrated through the written or performed assignment. If students wish, they can share their biographical moments with the class.

Writing a biographical essay

Ask students to write a brief biographical essay. The topic is a time in their lives when how they appeared on the outside was different from how they felt on the inside. This can be a moment, like Elberta’s, where they may have appeared sad, and really felt happy, or when they appeared calm and felt scared, etc.

Extended writing exercise

Students write an essay in two different voices. In first person, they describe a scene as they experienced it, and in second person, they describe a scene as someone else may have interpreted it.

Dramatic exercise: Acting out the scene (optional)

You may consider this activity if you have students who respond well to kinesthetic learning or who follow directions well. You may need at least twenty minutes to carry out this exercise completely.

Divide students into groups of four or five. Tell the students they will be making a frozen snapshot of the scene Elberta describes. They will “direct” the snapshot, by silently placing others in their group in a freeze frame snapshot of how that scene may have looked to an outsider. They take the primary spot as themselves, and arrange others around them as people may have been in the moment they are describing. Then each character can “give voice” or say what they imagine the different actors would have been thinking.

1. For example, the director is Elberta. He or she will place her classmates in different places, leaving a space at the center. She may place a student who represents her husband right next to her, in a motion like he is stretching from waking up. She may place a student who represents one of her kids asleep on the floor. Students should use their imagination based on what they know from Elberta’s oral history, and what else they may imagine is going on.
2. When the director creates the scene, she does so silently. She gently touches a person, points to the place where the student should stand, sit, or lie, and models the position and facial expression of that character. All of this is done silently. The student should mimic what has been modeled, and stay frozen in that position as the director continues to create the rest of the scene with the rest of the group.
3. When everyone in the group has been placed, the director will place herself in the center of the scene, with a “tearful” expression on her face, or however she imagines Elberta looked.
4. The rest of the class will have a chance to walk around the final frozen snapshot of one of the groups—all in silence.
5. When the class has walked around the entire scene a few times, tell the characters they can begin to voice their reactions or feelings. At this point, the student will have to perhaps guess who it is they represent, and make up something they think that character would be thinking. For instance, the husband may voice his feelings of being sore from sleeping on a cot, the child may voice how tired she is from the long night, Elberta may voice her gratitude. They usually voice the same sentence or two over and over again.
6. The rest of the class walks around the scene again and listens to the characters, taking note of the sentence each character has chosen to say.
7. Repeat this for each group, so everyone views each of the frozen scenes, and discusses how students interpreted the same scene differently.

• Next: Using the interview “What was the shelter like?”

For teachers

• Next: Using the interview “What was the shelter like?”

Learn more

• Hurricane Floyd In this special website from the University of North Carolina's Oral Histories of the American South, learn about the storm and what it felt like to experience Floyd from the North Carolinians who lived through it. Their words are presented here as a record of this devastating natural disaster and how it affected the people and communities of eastern North Carolina.
• Reading primary sources: An introduction for students A step-by-step guide for students examining primary sources, with specific questions divided into five layers of questioning.

Related topics

• Search LEARN NC for more resources on Elberta Hudson, Hurricane Floyd, North Carolina, Pender County, White Stocking, disaster relief, floods, oral histories, and photograph analysis.