Designing museum exhibits for “The Grapes of Wrath”: A multigenre project
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=892
A lesson plan for grade 11 English Language Arts
This lesson asks students to focus on one issue from the Depression as it applies to the novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Working alone or with a partner, students create artifacts in a variety of genres for a museum exhibit that will demonstrate important facts about the research topic and its significance to viewers.
In this lesson students will:
- analyze the way in which a work of literature is related to the themes and issues of its historical period.
- conduct research on the Depression era, using primary and secondary print and Internet sources.
- synthesize information from multiple sources by identifying the complexities and inconsistencies in the information.
- integrate quotations and citations into a written text while maintaining the flow of ideas.
- compose texts in multiple genres that convey material found in their research.
- deliver expository (informational) notes on their research.
During the reading of this novel, students study foreshadowing and the author’s use of intercalary chapters as a literary tool. Upon completion of the novel, students create multigenre projects to be displayed in the classroom “museum”. When students have exhibited their work, the class discusses historical facts and details that stood out in the exhibits as well as connections between the exhibits and the novel. Readwritethink provides project guidelines, planning tools, descriptions of genres, and rubrics. Additionally, there are several links to resources on the novel, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
English Language Arts (2004)
Grade 11
- Goal 2: The learner will inform an audience by using a variety of media to research and explain insights into language and culture.
- Objective 2.01: Research ideas, events, and/or movements related to United States culture by:
- locating facts and details for purposeful elaboration.
- organizing information to create a structure for purpose, audience, and context.
- excluding extraneous information.
-providing accurate documentation.
- Objective 2.01: Research ideas, events, and/or movements related to United States culture by:
- Goal 4: The learner will critically analyze text to gain meaning, develop thematic connections, and synthesize ideas.
- Objective 4.01: Interpret meaning for an audience by:
- examining the functions and the effects of narrative strategies such as plot, conflict, suspense, point of view, characterization, and dialogue.
- interpreting the effect of figures of speech (e.g., personification, oxymoron) and the effect of devices of sound (e.g., alliteration, onomatopoeia).
- analyzing stylistic features such as word choice and links between sense and sound.
- identifying ambiguity, contradiction, irony, parody, and satire.
- demonstrating how literary works reflect the culture that shaped them.
- Objective 4.01: Interpret meaning for an audience by:
