Rationale
The Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessments in the spring of 2012 for our fourth graders showed a raw reading score of 46.5%. Each year we look for ways to improve our students reading and writing in the classroom. We use many strategies and activities, which provide diverse experiences using various genres. We find that students usually write at the same level that they read so improving both is a way of reinforcing these skills. We know that students will want to learn if they are interested and engaged in their learning.
I would like to take advantage of this five-year commemoration of the 150 th Anniversary of the Civil War to have my students read and write non-fiction, including narratives and biography. Most students have heard of President Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman during Black History month and on President's Day. I would like to expose my students to the not so famous fugitive slaves who were courageous and passionate about their freedom and the freedom of others.
In the 1930s, various government agencies initiated work programs across the country to provide jobs for the unemployed. One of the projects that the Library of Congress undertook was a collection of black folk histories entitled, Slave Narratives. Field workers were sent out to find stories of ex-slaves, mostly in the South, by asking a list of questions devised for the project. As tape recorders had not yet been invented, the answers had to be written in long hand. When typed and submitted to the agency these came to ten thousand typed pages, representing approximately two thousand voices. These stories range from severe beatings and abject poverty to kind and generous masters who looked out for their "possessions". But these were not the first slave narratives. Students will learn that fugitive slaves were writing about their experiences even in the nineteenth century. Although dangerous, these activities changed the general public's thinking about the question of slavery in America.
"The question, 'Who will speak?' is less crucial than 'Who will listen?'"(2) It is just as important today that we listen to these stories, the stories of those who risked their lives to fight for freedom, for themselves and for others. By using stories from many of my students' ancestors, I hope to engage them in critical thinking and writing skills.
Using narratives to write about who they are and why they act in given situations allows my students to get to the heart of writing. Teachers often lament the writing students hand in, including "shopping list" accounts of experiences and stories lacking any descriptive words. My students will explore strategies for writing autobiographical accounts of important events in their life. They will be exposed to biography by reading different forms of biography, including graphic biography, to discuss how each story focuses on different aspects of a subject's life. They will explore strategies for writing biography by interviewing peers and family members to understand time, space and scale.
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