Chapter III.
REMEMBERING SLAVERY
THE BOOK
For Teachers: Using the Remembering Slavery Book in the
Classroom.
As with the Listening Guide to the taped/broadcast portion of
Remembering Slavery, the Reading Guide included here - featuring a Preview,
Reading Goal, list of Selected Readings, Follow-Up Questions and Additional
Activities - can be used to generate leson plans to involve and engage your
students more in the material and the issues the book raises. You might
choose to create a lesson plan based on each individual chapter and its
theme, or have a unit on the entire book, selecting a representative sampling
of readings or picking and choosing those narratives, questions, and activities
best suited for your class.
Consult the section titled "For Teachers: Using the Listening and
Reading Guides as Model Lesson Plans for Remembering Slavery" in Chapter 2
for ways to specifically tailor each of these sections to the
classroom. As with the Listening Guide exercises, you'll get the most out of
your students if you encourage them first to freewrite in response to any of the
quesitons included here before opening them up to discussion. You also might
want to go over the "Tips for Reading" above, or have the students brainstorm
their own strategies for careful, concentrated reading.
Time probably makes it difficult to have the class read the entire book.
If you want to have students read parts of the book, though, you can either
choose to focus on specific chapters, or select specific selections from each
chapter. To help determine which selections you want to use, the Reading
Guide provides a list of chapter highlights with brief summaries; these pieces
touch on the most crucial topics in the chapter, and are particularly accessible
to students.
There are several ways you might assign the readings. One is to assign
the reading for homework; you might also devote classroom time to reading
either silently or out loud in class. If time allows, it might be helpful to have
students read the narratives more than once; perhaps initially on their own at
home and a second time in class. The readings lend themselves well to
reading out loud, an activity that might be handled in a number of ways. You
can go around the room, with students taking turns reading out loud. You
might also assign specific narratives and interviews to individual students or
groups of students, who can prepare a presentation for the class incorporating
a "dramatic reading" and other activities designed by the students (such as
writing their own questions for the class; conducting research about issues
related to their narrative and presenting it to the class).