Through Their Eyes: Perspectives on Slavery

Through the journals written by Harriet Jacobs and Elizabeth Keckly, young readers gain insight into the lives of two enslaved children on nineteenth-century plantations.

The Clotilde was the last known ship to bring slaves from Africa to the United States - good riddance! Dive into the details of the ship, its cargo, origin, and route, and learn about the future of the Africans on board...

Explore multiple perspectives through a jigsaw activity that will improve your pupils' understanding of the characters in Esperanza Rising as well as their understanding of strikes and human rights. Tapping into prior knowledge, and...

The end is here. Scholars work independently on End of Unit 2 Assessment: Finding Evidence of Carl Hiaasen’s Perspective in Flush and Illustrating Perspective. Learners use their graphic organizers and text to write to a prompt asking...

Mix and mingle. Scholars travel around the room to music stopping to meet with a classmate when the music stops. They answer questions about Flush at each stop. Learners then work together to identify the evidence they used to determine...

Gist get to the point! Pupils read another excerpt from The Lost Garden, author Laurence Yep's autobiography. Working with partners, scholars annotate the text to look for the gist and record unfamiliar vocabulary in their word...

North is to factory as South is to plantation—the perfect analogy for the economy that set up the Civil War! The first lesson plan in a series of five helps teach beginners why the economy creates a driving force for conflict. Analysis...

Slavery is a serious topic that can be challenging for middle schoolers to study. Young scholars can see firsthand through primary sources what occurred during that time period in the United States. The third of five lessons provides...

Learners access oral histories that contain slave narratives from the Library of Congress. They describe the lives of former slaves, sample varied individual experiences and make generalizations about their research in journal entries.

In theory, at least, indentured servitude and slavery were two different practices in the American colonies. Class groups conduct a close reading of two primary source documents, one written by a slave and one by an indentured servant,...