| There are a
number of topics and themes in Elizabeth's Song that can be springboards for
possible discussions and
activities in the classroom:
Folk Music Elizabeth was steeped in a tradition of folk music, taking the songs she heard as a young girl in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and energizing them with her own musical style and interpretation. Out of the seeds of folk music, have sprung two of America's great contributions to music, Blues and Jazz. Suggested discussion topics:
Classroom Activities:
The Black Migration Just a few decades after the end of the American Civil War, many African-Americans were leaving the south, catching trains north like Louis in Elizabeth's Song in search of economic opportunity, and a better life.
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All Aboard! When Elizabeth Cotten was a child, trains were the fastest way to travel from place to place in the United States. At that time, many of the alternatives to train travel were unchanged from the ways people had been getting around for thousands of years: horseback, wagons, walking. Today, train travel, at least in the United States, isn't as common as earlier. Now, we have many ways to travel long distances: automobile, bus, and airplane. Even so, trains still carry many people cross-country and between cities, and they are still an important way to transport materials and goods. If all the world's tracks were laid out end to end, they would stretch more than 800,000 miles. How many trips to the moon does that equate to? How many times around the world would those tracks go? Suggested discussion topics:
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Classroom Activities: Have students plan a train trip to a US destination (you could also do this with other countries). Students can take a look at a map of Amtrak's routes across the United States for help in planning. (You can print out a copy of the map.) About how long will the trip take on the train? How long would it take by airplane or car. What places would they want to stop along the way. Why? |
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Historical Fiction |
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Historical fiction can help make history and other topics come alive. Click the links in the sidebar for ideas on how to use historical fiction in your classroom.
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Historical fiction links: Using historical fiction in your elementary classroom. Bibliography of Books Featuring Strong Female Characters List of historical fiction at SuffolkWeb
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©2002 Michael Wenberg. All rights reserved.
