A Homeschool Lesson Plan for the book, New Boots: the Story of Elisha Green

 

By Lesley Barker

New Boots: The Story of Elisha Green is a high-interest easy-reader written at the second to fourth grade reading level. It is a high-interest book so it engages readers who may struggle with reading. It works to introduce the "Rosa Parks of Kentucky" to anyone. There are four short chapters and a total of 32 pages. This lesson plan is written with the special dynamics of homeschoolers in mind. It starts the week before you plan to read the book with a series of assignments that will build background information for your students. Some assignments are designed for older students, others for younger students, and some assignments work for students of every grade and ability. The next week, this plan suggests that you read the book as a group at a rate of one chapter per day for four days. On the fifth day, the students will reflect and receive a follow up assignment. 

Here is a list of pre-reading assignments to prepare your students to respond to the book at their various developmental levels.

•       Using a map of the United States, assist each student to locate Kentucky. Ask them to identify the capitol of Kentucky. Point out the Ohio River. Help the students discover how many and which states border Kentucky? Provide a blank map of the United States with the borders of the individual states indicated. Assign the students to outline and color in Kentucky. Ask them to put a star where Frankfort is and to put dots on the map to show where Maysville and Paris are. Ask a high school student to find the distance between Maysville and Paris. Log these hours to geography.
•          Assign high school students to research the dates of the Civil War and to find out what role Kentucky played in that conflict. Log these hours as history.
•          Assign middle school students to look up President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Ask them to write a paraphrase of that speech. Log these hours as literacy, reading and writing.
•          Ask the group what they know about the history of slavery in the United States. Talk about what they think a child’s experience of being enslaved was like. Tell them that when they read New Boots: Elisha Green’s Story they will learn, from Elisha Green’s own words, about his childhood experience as a slave and about how slavery impacted his family. Log these hours as history.
•          Ask a fourth or fifth grader to figure out how someone could travel from Maysville to Paris in 1883. Ask them to look online to find pictures of passenger trains that would have been used at that time. Log these hours as technology.
•          Purchase small swatches of linen, wool and cotton fabric. Show pictures of sheep, flax and cotton plants. Help the students to feel the difference between the fabrics and to match the fabrics to their sources. Give each student a cotton ball. Demonstrate how to pull the fibers out and spin them between your fingers. Show pictures of a spinning wheel and of a hand-held spindle. Log these hours as science.

Take four days to read New Boots: Elisha Green’s Story out loud at one chapter per day. Each student who is able to read at a second to fourth grade level will have no trouble with the text. Each student can read one or two sentences. The other students should listen. If you have just one copy of the book, pass it from student to student. Every few paragraphs, stop. Ask the students to paraphrase or summarize what they have read. Ask them to make predictions about what will happen next. When the story touches one of the topics you assigned as preparation, ask the students to share what they learned and how the book connects to what they think about the topic. For example, the book discusses that Elisha Green’s owner was a pastor. How do your students respond to the idea that a pastor owned slaves? Ask them to trace what happened to change the way our culture considers slavery since the early nineteenth century. This should produce a review and an introduction to the issues of the Civil War and could connect to current events and the lingering contradictions around race in America today. When there is an opportunity to do a math problem as in how many rats Elisha Green would have had to catch to earn $1.00, stop reading and do the calculations. This should also lead the students to express other interesting ideas. Log these hours as reading, history, current events and math as appropriate.

On the fifth day, ask the students to reflect on what they have read. They should be able to give a good summary of the book. Ask them to talk about what they learned from the book. Ask them to reflect on what new questions the book triggered. Assign each student to produce a response to the book. For high school students the response could be an essay that requires more research and includes citations and footnotes. For middle school and older elementary students, the response could be a book report. For younger students, the response could be a drawing or a home-made puppet show. Once the responses are prepared, the students should share what they did. Finally, ask the group how they would present the life of Elisha Green if they had been selected as the team to go to the FKCC meet. What would they add or subtract to the presentation in the book? Take a vote. Do your students think that the kids in the book should win first prize? Log these hours as reading, writing, art or performing art as appropriate.

There are four books in the FKCC series of easy-readers available for sale now on Amazon. These are resources for K-12 Kentucky students to help them explore the Christian history of Kentucky and to help us all develop an objective, secular and non-devotional vocabulary to use when talking about the Christian religion in schools. Each book presents a different Kentucky Christian and can be used effectively in the homeschool. There is also a “club” that your students can join by providing their email address on the form here. Members of the Famous Kentucky Christian Club receive four fun emails each year. Each email will include information about how the Christian religion has impacted the history of Kentucky as well as games, riddles and puzzles.

Please help us introduce the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project to other homeschoolers by sharing this blog with your friends.