Kathena+Hasbrouck+DeGrassi's+Crucible+Materials

Attached here are some of the materials I've begun putting together for my unit on Arthur Miller's play [|//The Crucible//]. My main goal is to engage students in a concrete understanding that history has a tendency to repeat itself, and that we don't always learn from our past mistakes. By immersing students in the world of the Salem Witch Hunt, Blacklisting in the middle of the 20th century (and other examples of persecution that arise NOW), they can develop empathy and understanding for the past, the world they're a part of, and the times to come.

This first page introduces the unit I'm working on (and it's definitely a work in progress). Miller's play, as most people are well aware, is an allegory, and so I see it in it the chance to introduce students to different moments and reactions to history.


 * My first question:** How might I effectively pair this with an 11th grade history class to team-teach the text? I love the idea of working with another teacher on developing an actual assignment or project. How might I accomplish this without too many hurdles or hiccups? **A second part to this question**, but equally important: what other supplemental materials or sources do you think might be really helpful in this unit? I've tried to make it a multi-genre endeavor (including artwork, music, videos, poems, others plays, and novels), but can you recommend any historical documents or essays that might help provide historical context or insight into the text?

Students will have the opportunity to talk about their responses to the Anticipation Guide, finding out what they agree or disagree on, or perhaps what they just aren't sure about. After an initial discussion about their reactions, I'll collect the Guides. They'll be returned later, when students have finished the play. At this point, they'll respond to them based on what they've learned from the play, our class discussions, their exploratory writing, and their double entry journals. This will give them a chance to see if their ideas have changed, whether they feel more or less informed from the unit, and so on.
 * A Taste of What's to Come:** Before students sit down to read the play (which they'll be doing both in-class AND for homework), students will engage in a few prereading and prewriting activities. The first is to respond to an Anticipation Guide. This gives them a chance to share their opinions about general themes and topics that arise in the play BEFORE reading any of the text. It's sort of a baseline intro to the unit. I can get a feel for students' interests, ideas, biases, fears, and so on. It also puts us all on the same page, and gives the class a chance to consider what it is they'll be working on in the coming weeks.
 * My second question:** What do you think of the statements I've included on the Anticipation Guide? I want them to be broad enough that they connect to the students' lives (not just Miller's play). That said, they should connect with history at large, perhaps sociological or psychological issues, and so on.

On the other end of the assignment spectrum is my cumulative assignment (which is currently a work in progress). Basically, students will be putting together a portfolio (which will, quite literally, be presented as a collection of papers in a folder). The portfolio will consist of an I-Search paper (which allows students to personally engage with the topic they've chosen, instead of having to REsearch a topic that's already been covered (most likely by Wikipedia) time and again. It will also include four creative responses to the unit. These responses will hopefully engage students' multiple intelligences and learning styles--and make the project more of a fun task than a dull chore. What I've posed thus far is the bare-bones assignment. The I-Search AND the creative, multi-genre portion of the assignment are still being developed.
 * My third question:** How might YOU create a cumulative assignment based on //The Crucible//? See, I love the idea of putting literature into context, and so really digging into the history of the play seems an imperative to teaching it. Is a semi-formal research paper the way to go?