Thursday, April 5, 2012

Slaves' Stories: Inferring Important Information

In Social Studies, we have been learning about immigrants. Today we specifically focused on African immigrants and how many of them were forced against their own will to come to America and were sold as slaves.

To incorporate technology, I had students visit a Slaves' Stories website that features historical fiction stories of four African immigrants. Yesterday I modeled how to infer important information from one of the slave's stories, and today students practiced inferring important information themselves while reading the other three slave stories. They recorded their inferences as evidence of their ability to infer important information from a text.
 

Here are some of their inferences:

15 comments:

  1. I learned that the white men threw babies overboard

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    1. I wander why they do that? I think because they don't want a baby abord. what do you think?

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    2. Ana, that's right. Unfortunately, a lot of terrible things happened on these slave ships.

      Olivia, Why do you suppose they didn't want a baby on board a slave ship?

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    3. I think its because they did not want babies crying onbord.Or they were just so cruel they thought it was funny.

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    4. because they don't need dead babys to thow over bord right away.

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    5. i agree with Olivia. Because they don`t NEED babies on board,especially dead babies.

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    6. Ladies, we have to remember that the reason these African immigrants were brought to America was to sell/trade them as slaves. What value would a baby have to a landowner in America? The baby can't do any work because they're too little! Unfortunately, if babies were too sick or too loud, the European slave drivers didn't care about splitting up families and getting rid of the little ones - no matter what. It's just one more example of the horrible things that happened to slaves and their families on these ships!

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    7. Right Because babies cant do any thing!

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  2. I had lots of fun doing this. Where did you come up with this idea?

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed this activity, Olivia! I was searching for a kid-friendly website to help with our immigration unit, and I found the Slaves' Stories site! I figured since we have been talking about inferring and determining importance in reading, it would be a great way to overlap the two! :) Have a great Easter weekend. I'll see you Monday!

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    2. I had lots of fun doing this too!it was so much fun learning about slaves and it was a great idea to put the to reading strategies that we have been learning into 1 thing that we all could have a lot of fun with.Any way thanks for making 4th grade so much fun.

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    3. sorry i ment too! it

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  3. The slaves did not get what they wanted

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    1. You're right, April! They had everything taken from them, including their freedom. I hope you learned more about what slaves went through on these ships!

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  4. I had a lot of fun doing this and learning about slaves!it was cool to learn how their lives were in comparison to ours!

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