Station Work: Background Knowledge for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
- Zip
What educators are saying
Description
If you've ever taught Mildred D. Taylor's classic novel, then you know it requires a certain level of historical knowledge in order to fully understand.
Sharecropping, life in the south after Reconstruction, the Great Migration, and others are topics students need to have a base level of understanding of. The vast majority of this information can be acquired freely through the internet, but the sheer amount of gathering it requires takes an extremely long time. I hope this resource will save you 2-3 hours worth of work!
I realized I had to take a step back after years of teaching the novel and my students not understanding Uncle Hammer's move to the north, laws around who can do what where, and why the fact that the Logans owned land was so rare.
These stations provide 2 full days worth (around 1.5-2 hours) of work and touch on all historical areas students need to know about in order to appreciate this classic text.
These stations can be used -and adapted- for grades 6-8, depending on the skill and knowledge levels of your students.
Typically, I assign my students to a group (which probably shouldn’t have more than 5 students) so that I can control who is in charge of breaking down the most rigorous content for the rest of the class.
Each student picks their roll for the project, and as a group, they will get to work breaking down the topic they were assigned into their own words on a sheet of either chart or poster paper. They will do this for the first day.
I provide a couple of options for how to run the second day, but generally students watch as one group at a time presents their poster/ topic while they copy down the information on their worksheet.
The resource includes:
- Five stations, each with 8 photos from the time period and 1-2 pages worth of information.
- A directions page for the students
- A directions page for you (the teacher)
- A packet for copying down the information from other stations
- The link to a Google Docs version
