29.4: Lesson Plan for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Group Anthology Contribution 2019)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Lesson Plan
Objective: For the students to gain a deeper understanding of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and make critical claims about the ways race, religion, and class are used in this canonized piece of work. They will be able to use debate skills and cooperative skills to argue controversial statements made about the text.
Materials: – Pen/Pencil
– Handout provided
– A copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Introductory Activity: An opening move will be posted on the projector and the students will be given 5 minutes to complete the question or activity chosen. After the time is up the class will share their responses to the activity or question, which will only take up about 10-15 minutes.
Procedure: After the opening move and small class discussion, we will hand out the worksheets that will have the statements that the class will be debating. The class will stand in the center of the room and after hearing the statement, they will pick whether they agree or disagree with the statement. They will then discuss the statement and their thoughts about it while also developing an argument for their side. They will pull textual evidence from the story and discuss as a group their feelings on the statement. We will give them around 5 to 10 minutes to discuss and pull textual evidence. The class will regroup, staying on their sides and debate said statement. They will repeat this process about 3 times depending on time.
Twist: For the last question, we will repeat the same procedure of reading the statement out loud and allowing them to take their stance. Before they deliberate with their side, we will make them switch sides and now they must, as a group, argue the other side of the statement.
Rough Time Estimates:
4:00 – 4:05: Work on opening move
4:05 – 4:20: Talk about the opening move
4:20 – 4:35: Debate question 1
4:40 – 4:55: Debate question 2
5:00 – 5:15: Debate question 3
5:20 – 5:35: Debate question 4 (Twist question)
5:35 – 5:40: Debrief and discuss
Closure: During the debrief part of our lesson, we will summarize the points that the class brought up in the debates and we will ask any more clarifying questions about the story that were not brought up. The way that the students participate in the debates will be how we gauge to see their learning and understanding of the text.
Self-Evaluation :
- What went well?
- What didn’t go as planned?
- What do you think could have been done to make the lesson better?
- How might you change this plan in the future?
- Was the activity engaging for the students?
- Did you have enough time for all that you planned?