To Kill a Mockingbird resources
lesson plans and discussions
A complete teaching unit from Texas Tech University
Discussion Questions chapter by chapter http://www.wallingford.k12.ct.us/our_schools/high_schools/mark_t_sheehan/search_departments/english/mr_peter_wiesen/english_9/to_kill_a_mockingbird/index.html
LOC American Memories research project into the South of the 1930s
Discussion questions: http://www.chipublib.org/003cpl/onebook/questions.html
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lesson Plan #1
The author, Miss Harper Lee, was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended the local public schools, then Huntington College. Later she studied law at the University of Alabama but never completed work for the law degree. Her study of the law may be reflected in the simplicity of her style. Every event is narrated with a straightforward, simple approach. In her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, a lawyer is the main character. For this work she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel of 1960. The book has been made into a successful movie.
I. Students will be given two weeks to read the novel outside of class.
II. Chapter I
A. Vocabulary
B. Discussion questions:
1. Who is telling the story and from what point of view? (It should be pointed out to students that there are two sides to every argument. Actually there are many sides to a situation, depending upon who is looking at it and why. The different sidesӔ taken by different people are their points of view.)
2. What is the setting?
3. What kind of person is Atticus Finch?
III. Writing assignment:
The technique of this first chapter is like that of a mystery story in which the author mentions certain things and gives hints about facts which are not fully revealed until much later. The incident about Jem getting his arm broken is not reported until the last chapters of the novel. Can you think of some incident from your own experiences which seemed mysterious to you at the time? Recall the incident by writing about it.
Lesson Plan #2
Chapters 2-3
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
These two chapters present the first aspect of Scouts education.
A. What are some of her learning experiences?
(1. The Cunninghams are poor but honest people.
2. She must treat Walter with courtesy even though he is poor.
3. A guest must always be treated with respect regardless of his/her station in life.
4. She must try to see things from othersҒ points of view.)
B. Compare the Cunninghams with the Ewells.
III. Writing assignment:
Describe the relationship between Scout and Atticus. Think about whether you would like to have the same type of relationship with your parents.
Lesson Plan #3
Chapters 4-6
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. In Chapter 4 the Radley place becomes more mysterious. Discuss the attitude of Scout and Jem toward Boo Radley.
B. What does Atticus think of Boo?
C. What kind of person is Miss Maudie? Is she typical of the white people in this community?
D. Contrast Miss Maudies function with that of Miss Stephanie.
III. Writing assignment:
In these chapters the children are frightened by the firing of a gun after their attempt to peek into the Radley house. Can you remember a time when you were very frightened? Write about what happened, how you felt, and the outcome of the situation.
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Lesson Plan #4
Chapter 7-8
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
ScoutҒs learning experience continues. As the narrator, Scout observes and reports, but the reader often comes to a conclusion that Scout herself is not aware of.
A. What does Jem finally realize about Boo Radley and why?
B. When does Scout realize that although Boo may seem peculiar, he is really a kind and friendly person?
III. Writing assignment:
In Chapter 8 the emphasis of the novel shifts to the Tom Robinson case.
What are the two themes running through the book?
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Lesson Plan #5
Chapters 9-11
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. What are some of the problems that Jem and Scout encounter as a result of their fathers (Atticus) defending a Black man accused of rape?
B. What would you consider as basic differences between social and race relations at the present time and those described in the novel?
C. How are the Boo Radley and the Tom Robinson episodes similar?
How does each reflect something about the title of the novel?
III. Writing assignment:
Why is it, do you think, that young people and their parents sometimes have conflicts of one kind or another? Write an article giving your answer to this question. You might expand your answer to include a discussion of the reasons why young people as a group and adults as a group do not always understand and like each other. Is there a way in which mutual understanding and respect between these two groups can be achieved?
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Lesson Plan #6
Chapters 12-15
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. Chapter 12 presents additional views of the social situation in Maycomb. Discuss this situation as it pertains to Blacks and Whites.
B. What is Aunt AlexandraҒs role and what is her attitude concerning Atticus involvement with Tom RobinsonҒs case?
C. What effect does the Robinson case have on the Finch household?
D. Do you think that what happened to Tom Robinson in this novel could happen today? Why or why not?
III. Writing assignment:
In your own words, tell what you think is meant by prejudice.Ӕ
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Lesson Plan #7
Chapters 16-18
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. Describe the courthouse scene.
B. What is the general atmosphere in the courtroom?
C. During the trial, how does Atticus destroy Ewells story?
III. Writing assignment:
Atticus brings out in the trial that the Ewells live in a broken-down house behind the garbage dump. Mayella is seen to be a terribly lonely, isolated person without any friends or companions. As you read this part of the story, did you sympathize with Mayella? Tell how you felt about her and why.
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Lesson Plan #8
Chapters 19-22
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
Chapters 19 and 20 are important in ScoutҒs learning experiences
A. What does she understand about Mayellas character?
B. What does she understand about Tom Robinson?
C. Chapter 21 presents the suspense as to what the verdict will be. Jem feels confident that Tom Robinson will be set free. Rev. Sykes explains to him that it would be against tradition to decide in favor of a Black person. In light of the attitudes of all concerned, why do you suppose Atticus put so much effort into defending Tom?
III. Writing assignment:
Bob Ewell was embarrassed by Atticus in court and planned to get revenge. What are your feelings about ғgetting revenge, or ԓgetting back at people? Express your thoughts on this subject by giving an example to illustrate your point.
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Lesson Plan #9
Chapters 23-27
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. Atticus attempts to explain to Jem and Scout about the trial and why Ewell has acted the way he did. Does Atticus really understand the lengths that a man like Ewell will go to get revenge?
B. Scout confronts a type of prejudice in the schoolroom. What happened in school that she could not understand?
III. Writing assignment:
Have you ever felt that everybody else had the wrong idea about someone or something? Did you tell them how you felt, or did you wait to see what the outcome would be before stating your opinion? Write a composition about the situation and how it turned out.
Lesson Plan #10
Chapters 28-31
I. Vocabulary
II. Discussion:
A. In these final chapters Boo Radley makes his first physical appearance. Would you consider him the hero of the novel? If so, why?
B. What is ScoutԒs final learning experience in this novel?
C. In what way has Scout matured?
III. Writing assignment:
Discuss the limitations of using Scout as the narrator. What are the advantages?
Great Depression
In 1929, 3% of the population was unemployed; in 1930, the unemployment rate climbed to almost 9%; by 1931, it had reached 16%; and, in 1932, it rose to nearly 24% (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1960). During the same period, labor income fell by over 40%, manufacturing wages fell by 60%, and farm income fell by more than 55%. Between 1929 and 1932, more than 100,000 businesses failed and, during the 3 years ending in 1931, 4,305 banks with deposits of more than $2.75 billion failed (Blum et al., 1968). During 1932, more than one in four households lacked even a single wage earner (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1960).
As Blum and his colleagues have suggested, liquidation carried a frightful burden of suffering. Thousands of middle-class families, their incomes dwindling, sometimes entirely gone, lost next their savings, then their insurance, then, unable to pay their mortgages, their very homes Ӆ The times were even harder on laboring men and their families. The lost job, the fruitless search for work, the shoes worn through, and the clothes worn thin, the furniture and trinkets pawned, the menu stripped of meat and then of adequate nutrition, no rent, no joy, no hope; and finally the despair of breadlinesthese visited every city, leaving in their path sullen men, weeping women, and hungry children. So, too, on the farmחvanished incomes, foreclosures, tenancy, migrancy, and with them, as in the cities, the death of self-respect (Blum et al., 1968, p. 664).
The Depression traumatized the American family. Most directly, fewer couples married and fewer had children; between 1928 and 1932, the marriage rate fell by almost 20% and the birth rate by more than 13% (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1960). How life and relations changed inside families is less clear, although the middle-class model that advocated a system of divided responsibilities, relational commitment, and mutual affection also relied on economic prosperity and, so, is likely to have become less compelling. As the Lynds (Lynd & Lynd, 1956) had observed in Muncie, the model did not flourish under economic hardship, and there is no reason to suppose that it did so during the Depression. In particular, the ԓTarzan principle must often have become unrealistic as large numbers of husband-fathers lost their jobs and/or savings and, so, became unable to provide for their families’ economic and physical well-being. Likewise, the ԓJane principle, which instructed women to define themselves in the context of home and family, lacks authority when Tarzan is unable to provide. In fact, the traditional family model may be most vulnerable under trauma. The mother’s lack of expertise outside the home, which may be guarded jealously, as was the case among Middletown’s business-class, has been characterized as ԓa bad way to organize a family’s survival (Newman, 1988, p. 119) in that it reduces substantially a family’s ability to generate the resources necessary to maintain itself. In a more general sense, the misery of deep and prolonged economic hardship must surely have weakened the sexual intimacy of marriage and eroded even further spouses’relational satisfaction.
Publication Information: Book Title: Television Families: Is Something Wrong in Suburbia?. Contributors: William Douglas - author. Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Place of Publication: Mahwah, NJ. Publication Year: 2003. Page Number: 34.
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The modern bias
Infatuated by Emerson and Whitman
Continuing the work of re-educating myself after concluding that my degrees in English included massive doses of mideducation, I find myself reading with quite a lot of skepticism the anthology (Elements of Literature, Fifth Course, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003) Ive been given to teach American Literature.
In the student’s introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for example, I came across this: . . .his tendency to leave these [Christian] values unexamined led to poetry that often offered easy comfort at the expense of illumination.”
Similar comments are made about the other Fireside Poets--John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes: Their choice of subject matter--love, patriotism, nature, family, God, and religion--was, for the most part, comforting rather than challenging to their audienceӔ (149). To illustrate the problem,Ӕ the editors refer students, dismissively, to one of Longfellows poems:
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the worlds broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, however pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God oגerhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing oer lifeҒs solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
IsnҒt that simply awful? Or so the textbook editors invite us to think. Good writing, we have been told, challenges our traditional beliefs.
This, of course, is the modern bias. We are to give up our darkened faith in revealed religion, traditional morality and scriptural authority. We are to follow the new priests of art and of the intellect who will question everything and lead us to the future. Since weve been on that road for well over a hundred years now, it seems appropriate to ask where it has led.
“the Modern Movement was all a ghastly mistake, like Communism, and that, as with Communism, it will take a century or so to clean up the mess. “ John Derbyshire We moderns have cut ourselves off from a visionary tradition that formed many of the world’s most profound poets.
The text is quite clear which writers are better than Longfellow: Emerson and Whitman: ғLimited by their essential literary conservatism, the Fireside Poets were unable to recognize the poetry of the future, which was being written right under their noses. Whittiers response in 1855 to reading the first volume of a certain poetҒs work was to throw the book into the fire. Ralph Waldo Emersons response was much more far-sighted. ґI greet you, Emerson wrote to this maverick poet, Walt Whitman, ґat the beginning of a great career.Ҕ (150)
This, from an introduction not to Emerson or Whitman, but to Whittier and Longfellow. If you were a student encountering them for the first time, would you continue on? Or would you flip ahead to the realӔ writers--Emerson and Whitman?
Lest a student tempted to read these writers on their own terms, we get this from the introduction to William Cullen Bryant: Today BryantӒs poems are not read as the spiritual counsels they were meant to be; instead, they are read as period pieces that authentically reflect their times (169).
So there. This is dead stuff. Only interesting as historical evidence of the dark past.
In a sense, the textbook writers are obliged to say something such. After all, their task is to introduce newcomers to the established literary tradition, and there is little doubt either that the Emerson and Whitman are important figures in todayԒs canon or that Longfellow has been dropped. Its quite true, as a historical matter, that Longfellow and Bryant are no longer taken seriously by the literary establishment.
But what may be more worth thinking about is that the literary establishment is no longer taken seriously by--well, by anyone, except those whose business it is to take it seriously. Longfellow was a vastly popular poet in a way no poet, except possibly Robert Frost, was in the twentieth century.
Continuing the work of re-educating myself after concluding that my degrees in English included massive doses of mideducation, I find myself reading with quite a lot of skepticism the anthology (Elements of Literature, Fifth Course, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003) I’ve been given to teach American Literature.
In the student’s introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for example, I came across this: . . .his tendency to leave these [Christian] values unexamined led to poetry that often offered easy comfort at the expense of illumination.Ҕ
Similar comments are made about the other Fireside Poets--John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Their choice of subject matter--love, patriotism, nature, family, God, and religion--was, for the most part, comforting rather than challenging to their audience” (149). To illustrate the “problem,” the editors refer students, dismissively, to one of Longfellow’s poems:
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the worlds broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howeҒer pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God oגerhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing oer lifeҒs solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
The text is quite clear which writers are better than Longfellow: Emerson and Whitman: “Limited by their essential literary conservatism, the Fireside Poets were unable to recognize the poetry of the future, which was being written right under their noses. Whittier’s response in 1855 to reading the first volume of a certain poet’s work was to throw the book into the fire. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s response was much more far-sighted. “I greet you,” Emerson wrote to this maverick poet, Walt Whitman, “at the beginning of a great career.” (150) This, from an introduction not to Emerson or Whitman, but to Whittier and Longfellow. If you were a student encountering them for the first time, would you pay attention?
Lest a student be so tempted, we get this from the introduction to William Cullen Bryant: “Today Bryant’s poems are not read as the spiritual counsels they were meant to be; intead, they are read as period pieces that authentically reflect their times” (169).
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Readings •