Plantation Newspaper

[Kamii Harris]

Skills Goals:
2.06 Create written, oral, musical, visual, and theatrical presentations of social studies information.
3.05 Interpret history through artifacts, arts, and media
5.01 Use word processing to create, format, and produce classroom assignments/projects.

In groups of six, students will create newspapers about plantation life.
Using the http://plantationletters.com/letters.html, students will use letters from the plantations to create an online newspaper. This will be an elaborate newspaper which will include factual information from the letters as well as historical fiction.

Each newspaper will include:
information of political events during that month/year
a crime section
a society section
a sports section
an advice column
an editorial section
a weather section
an entertainment section
a classified section
an obituary section

While information is to be based on the Cameron plantations, outside sources may be used about the time frame. This project should be creative as well pertinent to the times (of course there might be some anachronisms). This project should take at least 3 days.

[John Lee]

This is an interesting idea. I wonder whether the letters will facilitate a section on sports? It might be a stretch. I do think students could develop some creative material on society, weather, editorial classified, and obituary. It would be really interesting to see one of these newspaper entries developed.