Dear Fellow Teacher,
This webquest was designed to encourage 9th or 10th grade English/LA students to think about the story of To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspectives of various minor characters in the novel. You may find that it is also appropriate as a supplemental activity for older students. However, some of the websites I have listed in the resources section contain material that younger students may be sensitive to. Be sure to visit the sites ahead of your students to make sure that they are all appropriate for your school and your students. You will surely notice that this is an ambitious task. I have designed this assuming that students would be working mainly independently over the course of a week-long wrap-up of the novel, with just two class periods (one at the beginning/one at the end) set aside for group work. If this still feels like too much for you or your students, feel free to use the links to the various resources as you see fit. Additionally, you can check out these alternative lesson plans or the more traditional curriculum I've provided for the novel in the form of writing prompts, chapter questions, and significant quotations.
The webquest will direct students to work in groups of three. Each
student in the group will select two of the following characters: Mrs. Dubose; Boo Radley; Tom Robinson; Walter Cunningham; Aunt Alexandra; and Calpurnia. Each student is then responsible
for choosing one chapter from the
original story for each of their two characters, and re-telling it from
that character's perspective. The group will then re-form and create a book with all six chapters, including an
introduction about Maycomb, Alabama, the setting for the novel, and a conclusion chapter that imagines what happens
to all of the six characters plus Scout, Jem and Atticus 20 years after the
story ends. Finally, each group must design a cover and bind the book. I intentionally did not include many resources for the design aspect of the project, hoping that students would seek and select their own methods to accomplish the effect they desire. I would make it a point to emphasize that there are many websites that offer to produce book covers for a large fee. These sites are intended for professional publishing endeavors, and in my opinion, professionally produced covers or bindings should be disqualified.
I have anticipated that the students will need web resources that include:
- Book binding
- Domestic servitude in the 1930's
- Missionary societies
- Domestic duties of women in the 1930's
- Prison conditions in the 1930's
- Mental illness
- The impact of alcoholism on families
- Morphine addiction & withdrawal
- Race relations in the south in the 1930's
- The WPA
- Maycomb, Alabama
- Fanfiction
- How to write fiction
This topic relates to several of the Massachusetts ELA Curriculum Frameworks, including:
- Standard 7: Beginning Reading Students will understand the nature of written English and the relationship of letters and spelling patterns to the sounds of speech.
- Standard 8: Understanding a Text Students will identify the basic facts and main ideas in a text and use them as the basis for interpretation.
- Standard 9: Making Connections Students will deepen their understanding of a literary or non-literary work by relating it to its contemporary context or historical background.
- Standard 10: Genre Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the characteristics of different genres.
- Standard 11: Theme Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of theme in a literary work and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
- Standard 12: Fiction Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
- Standard 13: Nonfiction Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the purposes, structure, and elements of nonfiction or informational materials and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
- Standard 15: Style and Language Students will identify and analyze how an author’s words appeal to the senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone, and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
- Standard 19: Writing Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail.
- Standard 20: Consideration of Audience and Purpose Students will write for different audiences and purposes.
- Standard 21: Revising Students will demonstrate improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in their compositions after revising them.
- Standard 22: Standard English Conventions Students will use knowledge of standard English conventions in their writing, revising, and editing.
- Standard 23: Organizing Ideas in Writing Students will organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.
- Standard 24: Research Students will gather information from a variety of sources, analyze and evaluate the quality of the information they obtain, and use it to answer their own questions.
- Standard 25: Evaluating Writing and Presentations Students will develop and use appropriate rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their compositions or research projects before presenting them to varied audiences.
- Standard 26: Analysis of Media Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the conventions, elements, and techniques of film, radio, video, television, multimedia productions, the Internet, and emerging technologies and provide evidence from the works to support their understanding.
- Standard 27: Media Production Students will design and create coherent media productions (audio, video, television, multimedia, Internet, emerging technologies) with a clear controlling idea, adequate detail, and appropriate consideration of audience, purpose, and medium.
A few notes about some of the webquest's features:
- The homepage includes a brief powerpoint presentation about perspective, just to get the thinking started.
- The two links listed under resources for Walter Cunningham are pages I created from the American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 website. Because I found the links through their search engine, I couldn't link this webquest directly to the proper transcripts. Students can find these and other primary source transcripts by searching through the link above.
- If your school has a license for Inspiration, (you can download it for a free 30-day trial) take a look at the concept map on that page as well. It may help some students more clearly understand their tasks.
- The evaluative rubric was created in a program called Rubistar. You can create rubrics here free of charge if you would like to design your own for this or other projects.
The intention of this webquest is multifaceted. I hope that students are able to explore the rich themes of this novel as well as the historical context of the characters and events. I also believe it is important for them to have the opportunity to express their understanding in both verbal and artistic ways. Please feel free to borrow or adapt from this site as you see fit.
Sincerely,
Kristin Sciacca