Nat Turner's Rebellion Essay

Topic / Subject / Text

Nat Turner’s Rebellion: A Graphic Novel by Michael Burgan, Illustrated by Richard Dominguez, Bob Wiacek, and Charles Barnett III

This is a graphic novel about Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831. I’ve chosen this book because it will be easily understood and enjoyed by my student while at the same time it is full of factual information and gives and good description of slave life at the time. Other resources will include newspaper accounts of the rebellion and a book with dated slave laws. The student will also be encouraged to look up info using known sources to him, such as wikipedia and other online sources.

Central Ideas

Content: Student should learn how slavery affected the lives of African Americans, and the idea that sometimes revolts/ protests get the opposite of the desiered effect. This will be done by reading the Graphic Novel about Turner’s rebellion as well as primary sources on slavery and answering the focusing question in an essay form.

Reading: Re-reading and paraphrasing help build deep understanding of text.

Writing: In a constructed response to the text the student will work with a thesis statement to create an essay on the subject. He will use notes taken in the reading portion, sort them out for appropriate information to base an argument around.

Focusing Question

How did Nat Turner’s Rebellion affect the lives of slaves in the American South?

Focus (answer to focusing question)

Nat Turner’s Rebellion caused a response from southern governments to put policies into place to crush any independent thinking such as reading and writing.

Building Content Knowledge, Understanding the Writer’s Craft

To build content knowledge we will:

• Go over the background of slavery (review from last year) and learn a little about other slave revolts.
• Go over vocabulary of slavery
• Geography: use an atlas of the US to learn where the rebellion took place
• Find information on the web about Nat Turner. Have student find this, read it and then go over it as a class while modeling note taking
• Guided reading process. Together as a class we read the. Think pair share. After we read the book together we will verbally discuss it and I will right down our first impressions on the board.
• Summarizing/ Paraphrasing (Think, talk write) to come up with a basic summary of the book using the magnet summary form
• Model note taking. How do we know if something is important?
• Go over slave laws pre and post rebellion.

Structures: How will students know how to organize their ideas and construct the piece of writing?

Before the student can write anything or learn anything about Nat Turner, I will model for him proper writing procedures. This will be done by modeling a similar question from another rebellion he already knows a lot about: Tiananmen Square.

This will have a similar question: How did the Tiananmen Square Protests affect the lives of pro-democracy Chinese people?

We will re-watch a video we watched on the protest last years and we will discuss possible answers to the essential question. Once we come up with a focus we will watch the video again and using a simple T chart we will write down differences in the lives of the Chinese people before an after the protest. We will also fill out a magnet summary form to summarize the video

I will give the student one of my essay starter graphic organizers that we will fill out together. After this is done we will use the painted essay formula to write a short essay answering the essential question: How did the Tiananmen Square Protests affect the lives of pro-democracy Chinese people? I will high light each section in the corresponding color to show him were each part, intro, and thesis, proof paragraphs # 1 and 2 and conclusion are.

Writing / Revising

We will read the book and other documents together one. Then we will think, pair share. We will use a T Chart to compare how life was before and after Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

We will then use the magnet summary form to write a summary of the graphic novel. We will read the book again this time looking for how life was different before and after the rebellion for slaves. To do this we will use a T chart. We will go over the magnet again to help us with the T chart. This time the student will be doing the majority of the finding of evidence.

Next the student will use my essay starter graphic organizer to plan out his essay. After this has been gone over together we will then start work on the essay itself. Writing it each section at a time. After each section is finished the student will read it aloud to the teacher in an attempt to find any thing that is obviously wrong. After this the student will edit that section them selves for spelling and grammar and then we will revise it for content together then move on to the next section until the whole piece is done.

To start off final revising we will go back to the modeled piece and I will edit that. First using basic spell check. Then reading the piece aloud to the student and then fixing anything that doesn’t make sense. Reading and re reading until the piece is finished editing.

After the student finished the piece and has edited each section as he goes we will work together to edit the whole piece. Then he will send it to other teachers he know and have them look it over for miss understanding etc. After this we will take into account all errors and make the final document.

Lesson Sequence

During this lesson:

• We will work for about 1 hour each day or until the student become agitated wit the subject.
• Since the book is a graphic novel I will have the student verbally summarize what happened after every few frames.

Lesson

1. Before lesson startes we will go back to our China unit from last year and talk about the Tiananmen Square Protests, ask the student if he remembers it. Tell him we’re going to use that to model essay writing. Tell him together we’re going to answer the question: How did the Tiananmen Square Protests affect the lives of pro-democracy Chinese people?

Ask how to do you find the affect of a certain event on certain people? Answer: You look at how it was before the event and how things were different after. Like in a science lab, before and after.

Watch video on TS, stop the video after every time there is a reference to how things were before or after the protest, so he learns how to find things. As we go along fill out a T chart of details of before and after. Then pick the top five important differences and fill out a magnet summary form together using the details to answer the focusing question.

Then use the essay starter graphic organizer to plan the essay. After this is done use the painted essay form to teach him the different parts of an essay. Together we will come up with an introduction, explaining why each statement is made in the intro and including the focusing statement.

2. After we complete the class made essay the next day we will introduce Nat Turner’s Rebellion. We will
1. Go over slavery: what is a slave?
2. Go over vocab
3. Go over geography
4. Go over the life of Nat Turner
5. Go over other slave revolts (pattern of failure, why?)
3. Read the book together. Talk about it right after reading. Then do a second read, ask after every frame in the graphic novel “is there evidence of how life for slaves was before or after the rebellion? Write it down on the T chart. Paraphrase each section of the book using the magnet summary form. Go over the slave laws after the revolt.
4. Fill out the essay starter graphic organizer. Come up with the basic background information for the introduction. Work together to write the focus (thesis) and come up with the main proof points.

5. Using the painted essay form plan out the essay.

6. Write the Introduction, revise it together as it is written.

7. Continue this way for each section: proof paragraphs and conclusion.

8. Put it all together, have student read it to me, then I read it to him. Fix any obvious issues.

9. Have student use spell check to fix spelling and grammar

10. Re –read the paper again. Go over each paragraph, doe sit make sense?

11. Send the paper to others to read, applies their comments. Print final piece

Assessment: How are students doing? What are my next steps as a teacher?

Essay is assessment. Depending on outcome we can move on to a different type of writing or try a different approach to this type of writing. It all depends on my student’s behavior and reaction to the work. Assess writing piece with the Response to Text rubric

Next Steps: Gradual Release of Responsibility

If this essay goes well and the student shows knowledge gained through this experience we’ll work on another form of writing this time with less teacher input and aiming for a more prolonged time in writing