Activities Teaching Guide

Activity One is an animated slide show with voice over at the beginning.  This activity is a general overview of slavery in America and provides a foundation for the rest of the elementary activities and some of the lesson plans.  This animation is best when viewed as a projection to the entire classroom via an LCD projector. An alternative is to have students with good reading skills view it individually during their time in the computer labs.  

The vocalized introduction lasts a few minutes. The remainder of the presentation  has an image and a paragraph of text presented in a slide show format. Text may be read aloud, either by the teacher or by students. It’s important that time is taken to discuss each piece of text. Click on each image to enlarge it, and talk about what is happening in the image.

Navigation: You can move forward and back by clicking on the either of the lower right or left corners.

Activity Two is a simple “fill in the blank” activity sheet that helps insure that students have paid attention during the presentation. This should be considered a language arts as well as a social studies activity.

Activity Three is a cross curriculum (language arts/social studies) activity that asks students to study and discuss an actual poster (primary resource) printed before the Civil War. Students then read a short, fictional paragraph describing Mr. Harris, the man who had the poster printed. After discussing the poster and paragraph, students are asked to write their own story about what they think happened to Mr. Harris, and respond to a series of questions.

About PDF’s: PDF stands for portable document format. A PDF retains all of the graphic and formatting components of the original piece, and will provide a much better quality print than simply printing from your web browser.  PDF’s are provided for all of the handouts necessary for you and your students to do the activities.  Just click the PDF icons located on the upper left of the pages. The PDF for the handout should open Adobe Acrobat Reader and display the document in a new browser window.

Also . . . If you use any of these activities, or even enjoyed viewing them, please email the Opera and let them know.  Funding for future educational materials depends on your response!