Amelia's Road - Teacher Notes

Overview

This lesson introduces students to the unique problems faced by children of migrant workers. The fact that today's migrant children continue to face many of the same challenges as migrant children from the Dust Bowl era illustrates the social relevance of the topic.

 

 

Objectives

Time Required

The activities in this lesson can be completed in any order. Each activity is self-contained and is designed for students to work on independently, with the exception of the mural activity. All activities will be more meaningful if they are done after reading and discussing Amelia's Road. Depending on student ability levels and the amount of in-class and at-home time allotted, each activity can be completed within one to several class periods.

Target Level - Grades 3-5

This lesson is keyed to California Content Standards for third grade and would also be appropriate for grades 4-5. It could easily be adapted for middle school students by using Amelia's Road as "touchstone piece" for introducing the Dust Bowl era.

Curriculum Fit

Grade 3 - Continuity and Change

 California Content Standards: History/Social Science - Grade 3

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Students in grade three learn more about our connections to the past and the ways in which particularly local, but also regional and national, government and traditions have developed and left their marks on current society, providing common memories. Emphasis is on the physical and cultural landscape of California, including the study of American Indians, the subsequent arrival of immigrants and the impact they have had in forming the character of our contemporary society.

3.1 Students describe the physical and human geography and use maps, tables, graphs, photographs, and charts to organize information about people, places and environments in a spatial context by:

1. identifying geographical features found in their local region (e.g., deserts, mountains, valleys, hills, coastal areas, oceans, lakes)

2. tracing the ways in which people have used the resources of the local region and modified the physical environment (e.g., a dam constructed upstream changed a river or coastline)

3.3 Students draw from historical and community resources to organize the sequence of events in local history and describe how each period of settlement left its mark on the land, in terms of:

3. why their community was established, how individuals and families contributed to its founding and development, and how the community has changed over time, drawing upon primary sources (e.g., maps, photographs, oral histories, letters, newspapers)

3.4 Students understand the role of rules and laws in our daily lives, and the basic structure of the United States government, in terms of:

6. the lives of American heroes who took risks to secure freedoms

3.5 Students demonstrate basic economic reasoning skills and an understanding of the economy of the local region, in terms of:

1. how local producers have used natural resources, human resources and capital resources to produce goods and services in the past and the present

2. how some things are made locally, some elsewhere in the U.S., and some abroad

3. how individual economic choices involve tradeoffs and the evaluation of benefits and costs

Materials and Resources

Books:

Altman, Linda Jacobs. Amelia's Road, Lee and Low Books Inc., 1993.
Atkin, S. Beth. Voices From the Fields: Children of Migrant Farmworkers Tell Their Stories. Little,
Brown and Company, 1993.
Braun, Barbara. A Weekend with Diego Rivera. Rizzoli, 1994.
Carlson, Lori. Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing Up Latino in the United States. Fawcett Juniper, 1994.
Jimenez, Francisco. The Circuit. University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

Software:
People of Sacramento CD-ROM

Online Sources:

Children of the Fields Fact Sheet - http://www.natlconsumersleague.org/child%20labor/fields.htm
Migrant Workers from the Dust Bowl - http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tsme.html
A Speech by Cesar Chavez - http://thecity.sfsu.edu/~ccipp/

Procedures

An excellent "into" activity is to have students create an actual or on-paper treasure box similar to the one Amelia filled with "Amelia things." After students have shared their personal treasures, begin the story. An extension of this activity would be to create a class treasure box to be mailed to another school. If you have Internet access, check out "ePals" <http://www.epals.com/> for classroom contacts.

Activities can be investigated on a daily basis following the sequence of the lesson plan. However, each activity is self-contained and may be skipped or completed in any order.

Evaluation

Each activity could be evaluated using a class-generated rubric or with the following holistic or analytical history/social studies rubrics:

Holistic History-Social Studies Rubric

4 - Excellent: The student's work is historically accurate, is exceptionally detailed, meets or exceeds grade-level requirements for written/oral communication. Presentation is unique and visually outstanding.

3 - Good: The student's work is historically accurate, contains ample detail, meets grade-level requirements for written/oral communication. Presentation is attractive.

2 - Fair: The student's work contains some historical inaccuracies, needs more details, contains many errors in written/oral communication. Presentation lacks quality and attention to detail.

1 - Poor: The student's work contains numerous historical inaccuracies, lacks focus, lacks content. Presentation lacks effort.

Analytical Rubric to Assess Historical and Social Science Thinking

Analytical rubric developed by Heidi Dettwiller from California Department of Education materials

Extension

A natural extension of this unit would be to delve further into the agricultural economy of California with a life science unit on plants. An excellent "side trip" from Amelia's Road would be a visit to a virtual farming community such a the UC Davis Gardens site or a field trip to an actual farm. Perhaps as students learn how labor-intensive farming is they will connect the bountiful harvests of California with the "voices from the fields."

Return to Amelia's Road

Lesson developed by Gail Desler, Elk Grove Unified School District.