Teaching Strategies
This unit is a multiple step process and a wide variety of teaching strategies will be used. Although some direct instruction will be necessary the goal will be to shift responsibility to the students as quickly as possible, with proper modeling, support, and differentiation as needed. At all times the overall goal of this unit will be to enhance historical thinking skills and students will work towards forming their own opinions about this material, collecting evidence and tools they will need to support their opinions.
Prior to teaching this unit students will gain background knowledge through direct instruction about slavery in the United States and will be prepared to learn about the experiences of enslaved people. The first step in this unit will be a whole class review of one slave narrative using predominantly teacher modeling in order to set a tone and preview a format/organizer. Students will then work in pairs or triads to review a second narrative, using the same format/organizer and will share their work in one of several formats, either presentation or gallery walk.
The second step will involve examining and questioning the sources. As noted earlier students will be exposed to a set of primary sources that have specific and well-documented drawbacks. Students will again work in pairs or triads to examine some of the scholarship about these drawbacks and compare/contrast what historians have written about using them. Inquiry-based learning will be utilized as much as possible with students using the sources and the scholarship to formulate questions (with teacher assistance as needed), search for answers, present findings and then critique other student work as well.
Once students have had a chance to investigate and discuss the drawbacks and the scholarly literature they will return to examining the narratives, this time with a much more critical eye. Students will be asked to review excerpts and try to predict what question the interviewers may have asked, and students will be asked to try and identify interview bias, leading questions, and other examples of the noted drawbacks of the narratives. Students will also be asked to make a judgment about the sources at some point and use evidence to support that claim. A variety of activities will be used during this part of the unit but all will be rooted in collaborative learning.
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