Classroom Activities
A Bronzeville Story
Set in 1949, A Bronzeville Story chronicles 11-year-old Penny’s first impressions of Chicago and her inner thoughts and worries about fitting in. The unit explores the second wave of the Great Migration and the promise and realities of life in the North, through five lessons that integrate social studies and language arts skills and assist students in learning their own family history.
Lesson 1: Vocabulary Game
By engaging students with an imaginative bulletin-board display and vocabulary
game, students will learn about the Great Migration and Chicago’s Bronzeville
neighborhood around 1949.
Lesson 2: Reader’s Theater
Through a reader’s theater performance of A Bronzeville Story, students
will make personal connections with history and better grasp the challenges and
opportunities Penny and her family encountered in Chicago.
Lesson 3: Conversation in the Round
Through a group discussion, students will identify the circumstances and causes
of prejudice posed in A Bronzeville Story and be challenged to evaluate
the differing attitudes of the various characters.
Lesson 4: Oral History Project
Students will relate their own family’s migration experiences to those of the
characters in A Bronzeville Story by learning how to conduct an oral-history
interview. This lesson was designed as a two-day activity, but may be altered
at will (see Lesson 5).
Lesson 5: Oral History Project (Part 2)
Students will summarize and present their family’s migration experiences, gathered
through oral history interviews (see Lesson 4).