March 24, 2011
Instructors/Teachers: Mr. Ralph, Ms. Natalie,
Ms. Vanessa, Mr. Yahya, Ms. Angelina
E6H
Period. 6
Lesson Plan
Objectives (Students will be able to):
1) Understand the Fugitive Slave Act and relate it to Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
2) Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individual, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
Aim: What effects did the Fugitive Slave Act have on slavery?
Do Now: Write a five sentence journal entry about if you were a runaway slave. What hardships would you face? Where would you plan to escape to? What would you do if you were captured?
Procedures:
• Have students do Do Now and share out
• Go over the Fugitive Slave Act and describe what it was.
• Ask class questions to answer.
• Talk about runaway slaves and compare to Harriet Jacob’s life.
• Give out Venn Diagram handout on comparing and contrasting Harriet Jacob’s life to Fugitive Slave Act.
• Give examples of what should be on Venn Diagram
• Have the students share out their answers
• End class with homework assignment
Mini Lesson: Fugitive Slave Act and Harriet Jacobs
I. Fugitive Slave Act:
a. Encouraged all people to hunt down and aid in the capture of runaway slaves.
b. Created a much greater animosity between the blacks and whites of the time period.
c. Gave an excuse for racist violence to carry on in the excuse of maintaining the act’s parameters.
II. Harriet Jacobs:
a. Young African American woman whom was born into slavery.
b. Went from a serene environment with her female master, to a hostile environment with the doctor.
c. Eluded the slave acts and hid with her grandmother to escape the reach of the racism and eventually raised children.
Small Group Learning: Compare the life of Harriet Jacob to the life of a runaway slave before the Fugitive Slave Act
Homework: Pretend you were living in the 1850’s, would you have helped runaway slaves or not? Explain in a well developed paragraph.
Sources Cited:
http://www.fortat4.com/education/printact/comparisons/Making%20Comparisons4.jpg
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/fugitive-slave-law.htm
http://www.harrietjacobs.org/bio.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html
