Objective: To help personalize what goes on in the classroom the following activities are designed to help students assimilate and use the information they learn in the course.
Activity #1
It is January 1, 1863, President Lincoln has signed the Emancipation Proclamation. You are Frederick Douglass. Write a letter to a friend telling him how you are feeling about this. (Use the voice of Douglass/ sound like him).
Activity #2
The Civil War is over, the period called Reconstruction has begun. Read the chapter from Booker T. Washington’s
Up From Slavery
on his school experience. Now write your own experience as if you were a newly freed slave going to school for the first time. You might want to write this as if making an entry in a diary.
September 3, 1867
Today was my first day in school. I didn’t
have alot of clothes to wear but . . .
Activity # 3
Interview someone in your family. If you have a tape recorder or access to one use it. You need to write questions to get yourself started in this activity.
Activity # 4
Write a skit using one of the autobiographies that has been read. Each student will have read all of the autobiographies from the nineteenth century, choose one of those stories and write a skit in teams. Each skit will be copied, and all members of the class will read each skit. The class will then choose a skit they can do. When the skit is completed and rehearsed, it will be videotaped.
Activity # 5
Oral History—Use a tape recorder and talk to people in your family ask them for family recipes, family remedies, favorite family stories, etc.
Activity # 6
Diagram a family tree and find as much data as possible include birthdates, dates of marriages, deaths, places of birth and deaths. (see example next page)
(figure available in print form)