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Nightjohn Webquest A WebQuest for 6th Grade LA
Introduction | Task | Resources | Conclusion | Further Exploration Imagine that you are 12 years
old and have been a slave since you were four. You live on a large, beautiful
plantation, but as a slave you can’t enjoy it.
Sarny, a character from the novel Nightjohn, lives
this existence. She is a slave
who lives on the Waller plantation. She must spend most of her waking time
working and is not allowed to learn to read or
write.
Sarny’s life begins to change as Nightjohn,
another slave, is brought to the plantation. When Sarny first sees him, he is brought
in with a rope around his neck, and his body is covered with scars from many
beatings. She is drawn to Nightjohn when
she learns that he escaped North to freedom, only to
voluntarily return to the South. Nightjohn
has a self-imposed mission--to teach slaves how to read and write. He
believes knowledge is the key to helping slaves break out of bondage. Sarny is
willing to take the risk, even knowing that the penalty for reading is very
dangerous.
The activity below will give
you background information about slavery so that you can better understand
the book.
You will be assigned a
partner to work with. Your task is for you and your partner to learn as much
as you can about this "peculiar institution" called slavery. Follow
the directions carefully. Slavery - Find out how long slavery went on, where the
slaves came from, and their lifestyles.
1. Who were the slaves and how did they get
here? 2. Why was there slavery in the 3. What was life like for most slave families? 4. Why was cotton so important? 5. How long did slavery last? 6. What is the Emancipation Proclamation? Did
it do what it was designed to do? Why? 7. What brought slavery to an end in the Lincoln Papers: The
Emancipation Proclamation Slave
Trade Maps
By now
you should be able to detail the life, culture, and struggles of an
African slave in For exploration outside of class: Slavery: The
Peculiar Institution Voices from
the Days of Slavery Slavery and the Making of America I Will Be Heard: Abolutionism in America Last updated on April 5, 2007, by Tami Brass. Based on a template from The WebQuest Page |
