Hidden stories: A three-part lesson in African American history, research, and children’s literature

In this high school lesson plan, students will create a timeline of African American history, review a work of children's literature, and then create their own works of children's literature drawing on a primary source document pertaining to the life of an ordinary African American.

A lesson plan for grades 11–12 English Language Arts and Social Studies

By Edie McDowell

Learning from each other

When I was in 4th grade, my teacher Mrs. Norville assigned us the task of researching, developing, and teaching a lesson to our classmates on a topic of our choice from American Studies. We could pick inventions, famous people, unusual places, transportation, arts, geography, food, sports… pretty much anything that we were interested in.

Mrs. N told us that the real test of one’s understanding lies in that person’s ability to impart knowledge to others. This was daunting to us nine-year-olds, but we rose to the occasion and I believe we learned more than we expected to. We certainly learned more about history and communication than the obscure trivia we shared with one another. (I still remember my project about the sad demise of the buffalo.)

As a teacher, I always strive to offer students similarly stimulating challenges for learning and teaching. This interdisciplinary lesson was developed with that goal in mind.

Learn more

• 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.
• The not-so-famous person report Instead of teaching the history of the famous, use research in primary sources to teach students that the past and present were made by people like them.

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• Jim Crow and segregation: This is an integrated lesson plan that incorporates both eighth grade language arts and history. Using Internet research, literary analysis, and persuasive technique, students will practice reading and writing skills while analyzing the impact of Jim Crow Segregation on African Americans living in North Carolina and elsewhere.
• Discovering how to take care of our natural resources: This lesson focuses on our natural resources and the effects our actions have on them. Students explore this concept through discussion, matching, literature, and writing.

Related topics

• Learn more about African Americans, American history, history, language arts, literature, reading, social studies, stories, and writing.

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This interdisciplinary lesson consists of three parts, integrating literary analysis, composition, and social studies. In the first part, students conduct research on a particular era of African American history. In the second, students review children’s literature in four different genres. And in the final part, students draw on what they’ve learned in the first two parts of the lesson to produce their own piece of children’s literature based on African American history.

Learning outcomes

• Students will demonstrate comprehension of the chronology of significant events in African American history.
• Students will demonstrate the ability to place major people, places, and events on a timeline of African American history and to recognize the contributions of more obscure individuals to this history.
• Students will conduct research using primary source documents from a variety of sources.
• Students will research, collect and synthesize data, and use results to create an original literary work of fact or fiction.
• Students will demonstrate understanding of audience and purpose by selecting appropriate language, content, and structure.
• Students will create a final product for classroom publication, demonstrating competence in writing, proofreading, revising, and editing.

Teacher preparation

Time required for lesson

This lesson is divided into three parts, which may be taught sequentially together as a mini-unit or implemented independently as separate lessons spaced over a longer period of time.

Therefore, the amount of time required to complete each part may be varied according to the need to review (or not review) historical context and the amount of independent project work assigned as homework.

Recommended class time is as follows:

• Part one: Historical context (review of various timelines) will require two 90-minute blocks.
• Part two: Children’s literature review will require two 90-minute blocks.
• Part three: Research, synthesis, writing, editing, and publication will require two 90-minute blocks spaced a week apart (with homework for project completion), or available time in class/computer lab (ideally five 90-minute blocks, spaced over several weeks).

Materials needed

• Computers with internet access — one for each group, pair, or individual student
• Student access to word-processing software and printers
• Notebooks
• 3 x 5” index cards
• Clothesline or sturdy twine — enough to string across classroom
• Felt tip markers
• Clothespins or paperclips
• Pencils and pens
• Art supplies for illustrating final project
• Standard copy paper
• Binders for book-making
• Children’s literature review form
• American history or African American studies textbook (optional)
• Selected works of children’s literature with the theme of African American literature. Author’s note: I selected the following books from our local library. Links to their Worldcat records are provided:
  • Rosa by Nikki Giovanni. Henry Holt and Co., New York, 2005.
  • Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters by Andrea Davis Pinkney. Gulliver Books, Harcourt, Inc., San Diego, 2000.
  • Up Before Daybreak: Cotton and People in America by Deborah Hopkinson. Scholastic, Inc., NY, 2006.
  • Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford. Jump at the Sun, Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 2006.
  • The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom by Emily Arnold McCully. Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 2007.
  • Alec’s Primer by Mildred Pitts Walter. University Press of New England, Hanover, and London, 2004.
  • Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine. Scholastic Press, New York, 2007.

  The following websites provide additional suggestions of African American children’s literature. When selecting from these lists, be sure to choose books for elementary grade readers with the theme of African American history.

  • African American Themed Reviews from the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. Relevant books reviewed by authors, librarians, writers, editors, teachers, children’s literature specialists, and physicians.
  • African-American Children’s Books from the Arrowhead Library System of Janesville, Wisconsin.

Pre-activities

• This lesson plan is designed for 11th grade AP/honors English students who are also enrolled in, or have previously taken, a course in American history or African American studies. Students will need a chronological historical context in which to place the people, places, and events that they discover in their research. Part One of this lesson offers a review of this background knowledge. It may also be used to introduce students to an overview of African American history, providing a general context for the reading and research. Thus, teachers may opt to begin with the literature lessons in Parts 2 and 3, skipping this activity altogether.
• Students will need to be able to read, interpret, and construct a timeline.
• Students will also need to be prepared to evaluate a work of children’s literature, including its genre, literary elements (characters, setting, plot, theme, etc.), audience, and purpose. The lesson is divided into two English components involving composition: (1) literary analysis, including reading, research, and written review; and (2) creative writing, including research using primary sources, note-taking, documentation, synthesis, writing, editing, and in-class publication of an original work of historical fiction. Both small-group and independent work will facilitate research in history and social studies in preparation for writing.
• Before beginning the lesson, bookmark each of the websites selected to be used with your class from those suggested.
• Prepare the general timeline by writing the century dates and titles of the following historical periods on index cards (one item on each index card).

  Dates:

  • Before 1601
  • 1601 - 1700
  • 1701 - 1800
  • 1801 - 1900
  • 1901 - 2000
  • 2001 -

  Titles:

  • African origins and the trans-Atlantic slave trade
  • The colonies and the early republic
  • 1800 through the Civil War
  • Reconstruction to 1900
  • The Great Migration, The Harlem Renaissance, and World War I
  • The Great Depression, World War II and the eve of Civil Rights

  These major segments of the timeline will overlap centuries, obviously, but this division creates a general structure for the student-generated contributions to the class timeline.

• You may involve students in arranging these dates and titles, or you may expedite the process by preparing a timeline in advance. To do so, hang a “clothesline” along the length of one wall in the classroom. Use clothespins or paperclips to attach the cards to the line. You may add streamers, ribbon, etc. (color-coded or not) to visually delineate each time period. (Students may have original ideas to jazz the number line up.)
• Prepare for putting students into groups by writing dates on slips of paper for students to draw. There should be one for each student, and there should be an equal number for each historical era. (See step 5 in “Part one: Historical context.”)

Activities

Part one: Historical context

Day one:

1. Ask students to briefly discuss the purpose of timelines as a tool to summarize history. Look at various examples of timelines found in history textbooks, on posters, in documents, etc. Ask them to consider how the items listed on a timeline might influence the attitude of the reader. (For example, if only dates, people, places, and events are included from the limited experience/perspective of one cultural, ethnic, or religious group, could this data be used to accurately represent a summary of a historical period? Why or why not?)
2. Remind students that timelines often fail to include obscure places, people and events regardless of the fact that these may have had a significant impact on the course of history. Suggest that they each jot down a timeline of the main events in school over the course of the past year. Allow five minutes for brainstorming and sharing of conclusions. Major events will likely appear on most students’ timelines, but personal experiences and memories will vary widely. Ask students to consider how “history” might be different if the perspectives of non-famous, ordinary people were included. Tell them that they will soon have the opportunity to explore a variety of primary sources which record the first-person hand experiences of such obscure, yet fascinating people.
3. Direct students to the African American History: Timeline Home Page from the BlackPast.org website, created by Quintard Taylor, a professor of American history at the University of Washington in Seattle. (This website is an online reference guide to African American history, including listings of major digitized archival holdings in African American history. Timelines are offered for each century. Links are provided to major African American museums, digital archives, primary source documents, and research guides.)
4. Read the statement on the timeline page to the students:
   

   Absorbing and referring to a time line (or better, yet, making your own) is an effective way of learning the sequential course of events and often the timeline can reveal the possibility of the relationship between causes, people and events that occurred in the same time period, while not in the same geographical area.

   This is particularly true in surveying a discreet subject, which exists in relationship to many other events and background. African American studies is such a subject.

5. Tell students that they will be working in small groups. Each group will be assigned to one segment of African American history and will be responsible for identifying major and minor events, people, and places that serve to define or illustrate that era. Just as we have no choice or control of the time into which we are born, fate will determine the era to which students are assigned for this research project. Have students draw slips of paper with dates which fall into the corresponding centuries. They can meet their group members at stations labeled to correspond to either the list of dates by century, or the list of time periods by title.
6. Each group will need to work cooperatively and efficiently to complete the following tasks within the class block:
   1. Access the African American History: Timeline Home Page from the BlackPast.org website.
   2. Click on the century timeline for your assigned segment of history.
   3. Read and take notes on significant dates, people, places, and events from those listed for that era. Be prepared to explain your selections.
   4. If time permits, visit other websites which offer timelines of African American history. (Suggestions follow. Remind students to cite each reference used in their notes.) Note: In addition to providing more diverse and notable details to include in the student-generated timeline, searching other timelines enables students to compare/contrast purpose, audience, potential bias, etc.
      • African American World Timeline from the PBS website
      • American History Timeline from the Encyclopedia Smithsonian website
      • African-American History Timeline from the Infoplease.com website

Day two:

7. Have each group summarize and share results with the class in a concise presentation.
8. Instruct students to take notes (individually) in their notebooks on each time segment presentation.

Part two: Children’s literature review

1. Have students work in small groups of 3-4 members to select, read, and review at least three children’s books written for an elementary audience, grades 2-5. Each group will select (or be assigned) one book from each of the following genres:
   • biography
   • history
   • historical fiction
   • fiction (prose, poetry, or drama)

   You may assign these selections deliberately or randomly to expedite the lesson. Note that students may be more invested in the project if allowed the opportunity to make their own selections according to areas of individual interest.

   Options: You may choose one of the following options for putting students into groups:

   • Continue with the same small groups from Part One, suggesting books relevant to the time segments already examined by each team.
   • Reassign students to new teams, having each review a random selection of books, not specific to one historical time segment.
2. Hand out the children’s literature review, which is designed as a tool for students to use in evaluating the selections assigned. Each team should work together to complete a review for the books selected. Results should be shared in brief presentations to the entire class. (Note: The children’s literature review appears below, and is also included as an attachment under Materials needed above.)
   

   Children’s literature review

   Title
   Author
   Illustrator
   Publisher & date
   Fact/fiction & genre
   Audience (provide evidence)
   Purpose/subject/theme (provide specific supporting examples)
   Characters
   Setting
   Plot summary
   Literary techniques (such as style, syntax, diction, figurative language, tone)
   Conclusions (recommendations, evidence of bias, realism, etc.)

   General questions to be answered in the final presentation:

   • Considering the setting of your story (time and place), if fiction, or the actual dates, if non-fiction, which time segment of the African American history timeline would each book be placed?
   • Given what you have learned about history, how authentic does the portrayal of this time period seem to be? Identify specific examples of realistic details you noted, or suggest details that the author might have included. Briefly explain your opinion.
   • Write the title, author, and date on an index card to be added to the timeline.

Part three: Research, synthesis, writing, editing, and publication

1. Introduce this part of the lesson by telling students they will work independently to research the life of an obscure person whose story is told only through primary sources. You may also wish to start this part of the lesson by sharing with students the website Africans in America, from PBS. The site offers excellent questions to guide students in using primary source documents.
2. Have students use one of the websites listed below to locate a primary source that tells the story of a particularly interesting person.
   • Africans in America, from the PBS website, offers excellent questions to guide students in using primary source documents. The site provides a list of general resources, including links to other websites with numerous primary source materials. The site also includes a resource bank containing a number of primary source documents.
   • The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, from the PBS website, provides a collection of personal narratives specifically from the Jim Crow era. Many of the narratives are audio recordings, but some are text transcriptions.
   • African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, from the Library of Congress, offers numerous primary sources that reveal information about the lives of African Americans from the beginning of slavery to the Civil Rights era. Note: Most of these sources may be too long for students to use in this context. You may simply choose to show students a few resources from the site to spark their curiosity.
3. Optional: Using primary sources can be a powerful and evocative way to engage students in history. However, students can sometimes have trouble understanding or analyzing primary sources. This set of questions from the PBS Africans in America Teacher’s Guide will help students feel more comfortable using such sources. Students may find it helpful to underline the answers within the documents they choose to work with.
4. After each student has identified a primary source he or she would like to work with, have the students take notes on their sources using the following questions from David Walbert’s lesson plan, “The not-so-famous person report“:
   • General questions:
     • Where did this person live?
     • What was his/her occupation?
     • How did this person live? Was this typical of the time and place in which he/she lived? How or how not?
     • What was his/her religion? How important was religion in this person’s life?
     • What is this person’s family background? Was this typical of the time and place in which he/she lived? How or how not?
     • What social and economic factors shaped this person’s life?
     • To what extent were those social and economic factors unique to this person’s experience, and to what extent were they shared by others?
     • What were his/her political beliefs? (If they are not stated explicitly, can you infer what they might have been?) Why, based on his/her background and life experience, might he/she have held those beliefs?
     • Given his or her background, social/economic conditions, etc., how do you think this person might have “turned out” differently (or acted differently in the major event you’re researching)?
     • What impact did this person have on the events of his or her time?
   • If the primary source is an interview:
     • Are there questions you would have asked the subject that the interviewer didn’t ask?
     • Why do you think the interviewer asked the questions he/she did?
     • What was the interviewer primarily interested in?
     • Do you think the interviewer was biased in any way? What makes you think so?
     • Do you think the interviewee was honest in his or her answers? What makes you think so?
   • If the primary source was a memoir or autobiography:
     • What was the author’s reason for writing this memoir?
     • Are there topics he/she left out that you wanted to know more about?
     • Are there topics or issues on which you think the author might not have been entirely honest? Why or why not?
   • If the primary source was a diary:
     • Was this intended as a private diary, or did the author expect it to be read? If you think it was intended to be read, what makes you think so?
     • Are there topics or issues the author left out that you wanted to know more about? Why do you think he/she didn’t address them?
5. After taking notes, students will need to decide if they want to create a work of fiction or nonfiction. Tell students that the purpose of either work of literature will be to share information with an elementary school audience. Discuss appropriate selection of words, format, concepts, etc. for an elementary audience. The children’s literature already examined may be used as examples, especially the works that received favorable reviews.

   Students may also use the children’s literature review form from part two as a basic planning guide in their writing.

6. Instruct students to create their works of children’s literature, being certain to practice the writing process from rough draft to final publication. Students may opt to illustrate their final word-processed and printed stories.
7. As each story is completed, students may create an index card with the title, author, and date of setting to add the class timeline. These additions further illustrate the point that untold stories of ordinary people are important to our nation’s history.
8. Optional: Once the stories are completed, the children’s literature review form may be used for peer review in small groups or pairs of students. Similarly, the teacher may opt to use this form as a method of assessment.
9. Optional: Ideally, these stories should be shared with the audience for which they were intended, elementary students. If you can arrange it, you may choose to schedule a class visit to an elementary school to have your students share their creative work.

Assessment

Part one: Historical context

• Student participation in research and presentation = 20%
• Student summary of historical segment = 20%
• Demonstrated comprehension of timeline in presentation = 60%

Part two: Children’s literature review

• Student participation in all aspects of review process = 20%
• Demonstrated ability to research and synthesize information by:
  • investigating a variety of media sources = 10%
  • evaluating validity and significance of information = 15%
  • organizing information for clarity and effectiveness = 10%
  • demonstrating awareness of purpose, audience, and context = 15%
  • documenting sources accurately = 10%
• Analyze the artistry of various works of literature by:
  • recognizing historical context in terms of the evolution of language and literature = 10%
  • examining literary techniques such as style, syntax, diction, figurative language, tone, purpose, and audience = 10%

Part three: Research, synthesis, writing, editing, and publication

• Children’s literature review (reviews by teacher and/or peers)

Websites

• Resources for finding information about African American children’s literature:
  • African American Themed Reviews from the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database. Relevant books reviewed by authors, librarians, writers, editors, teachers, children’s literature specialists, and physicians.
  • African-American Children’s Books from the Arrowhead Library System of Janesville, Wisconsin.
• Timelines of African American history:
  • African American History: Timeline Home Page from the BlackPast.org website
  • African American World Timeline from the PBS website
  • American History Timeline from the Encyclopedia Smithsonian website
  • African-American History Timeline from the Infoplease.com website
• Resources for finding primary sources related to African American history:
  • Africans in America, from the PBS website, offers excellent questions to guide students in using primary source documents. The site provides a list of general resources, including links to other websites with numerous primary source materials. The site also includes a resource bank containing a number of primary source documents.
  • The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, from the PBS website, provides a collection of personal narratives specifically from the Jim Crow era. Many of the narratives are audio recordings, but some are text transcriptions.
  • African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, from the Library of Congress, offers numerous primary sources that reveal information about the lives of African Americans from the beginning of slavery to the Civil Rights era.