To Teach the Story of America [S1 E26]

In today’s episode, we tackle strategies and essential questions that will help you take on the early American texts in your curriculum. Whether you love cracking open the Declaration of Independence for rhetorical analysis or avoid it as much as possible, these text are important for our students to digest not only in their history classes, but with a language arts lens as well.

When lesson planning for a unit or even a longer set of time that deals with early American voices (or even further down the timeline than that!) we encourage you to consider a few things:

• Write yourself a strong, sexy essential question. Kids don’t inherently care about this era, and honestly, are sometimes annoyed to be tackling these texts twice. Create an essential question that takes the spotlight off the era itself and onto a timeless, intriguing question.

• Remember your responsibility for selecting and providing multiple perspectives. Think seriously about who is part of this story, who gets the most time, and who is traditionally shafted from this story.

• Consider pairing texts together. Offering contrast is a rich way to help students get deeper in their analysis when texts are paired side by side.

• Mix up your mediums. Offer “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (a sermon) next to Obama’s eulogy for John Lewis (also spoken in a church, from a pulpit, but with a very contrasting tone and message). Think about podcasts, songs, poetry, and different types of nonfiction.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Here are the bajillion activities we reference for your download. Enjoy!!