Unit Theme: The Juneteenth Story
Objective: After completing the lesson, the student will comprehend the nature and implications of
slavery as it relates to the economics of the time and the oppression of humans.
Grade Levels: 3-12
Subject: History
Cross Curricular Connections: Social Studies, Art, Music, Geography, Economics
Essential Questions:
1. What impact did slavery have on American History?
2. How did slave trade and slavery itself affect the economy of America?
3. What role did slavery play in the social and political demographics of the American States?
Enduring Understanding:
1. Social, political and economic oppression leads to imprisonment of both the slave and the
master.
2. Timelines can be used to track the sequence of events for determining causes and effects.
3. Economic power can be a corrupting influence if not balanced with a conscience.
Guiding Questions
1. Why did the colonists in early America import slaves?
2. How did the music and art of the Slavery Period convey the mood of the people?
3. Why do historians use timelines in the analysis of historical events?
4. In The Juneteenth Story, how did Americans use slaves to reduce labor costs?
5. How did slaves contribute to the development of America?
6. Were there racial groups other than Africans used as slaves in early America? If so, who were
they?
Critical Contents and Skills
Students will know…
1. The causes of the slave trade.
2. The business costs and profits.
3. The important contributions African American slaves made to benefit the growth of America.
4. Time, location and events that shaped cultural beliefs and practices.
5. How the exchange of ideas and innovations affect cultures.
Students will be able to:
1. Use multiple source documents to analyze perspectives.
2. Estimate potential profits from a slave ship.
3. Estimate potential profits from slave labor.
4. Develop, present and follow logical reasoning.
Instructional Plan/Activities
1. Students will read and compare Anglo Saxon and African American accounts of the slave trade in
Colonial America. Students in grades 8-12 will set up Cornell Notes (write guiding question on
one side and then answers on the other side from the readings). Students should also cite
where in the text they found support for their question.
2. Students will write a comparison of the viewpoints of a slave owner and a slave consisting of
two paragraphs (grades 4-8) and a basic essay (introductory paragraph, three detailed
paragraphs, and a conclusion (grades 9-12). Grades 9-12 will also take the comparisons and
state if slavery still exists today, if so how? Also, explain why slavery is referred to today as
“institutionalized slavery.”
2a. Students in grade 3 will draw two pictures- one of a slave owner and one of a slave that
shows how the student thinks each one may have felt and will write a caption for each.
3. Create a graphic organizer listing the areas of interdependence for the slave owners and the
slaves. To allow students to take ownership of their work, the teacher may start the project
during teaching time; however, the students are to finish this concerted effort in tables of two.
Each student should have a graph, and each group should be alike.
4. Write your own song-Students will write a song as a group project about what happened to the
northern industrial economy when the southern agricultural based economy nearly collapsed
once slavery was abolished.
5. Write an analysis of how the northern and southern economies needed each other (9-12
grades).
Abbreviated list of Content Standards addressed:
Social Studies (Culture) Standard 3.1.01 Understand the diversity of human cultures. A. Recognize that
changes in culture occur through the spread of people, languages, ideas, and goods. B. Compare cultural
differences in various regions of the United States and the world.
Social Studies (Economics) Standard 3.2.02 Give examples of fundamental economic concepts. C. Explain
how supply and demand affects the price of a good or service. D. Distinguish between imports and
exports.
Social Studies (Geography) Standard 3.3.03 Demonstrate how to identify and locate major physical and
political features on globes and maps. C. Show the population distribution of the state and country.
Social Studies (History) Standard 3.5.02 Understand the place of historical events in the context of past,
present and future.
Social Studies (Culture) Standard 4.1 spi.1 Identify pre-colonial Native American groups (i.e., Cherokee,
Creek, Chickasaw, Aztec, Mayans, Olmec, Mississippi Mountain Builders).
Social Studies (Geography) 4.3. spi. 4 Recognize river systems that impacted early American History (i.e.,
Mississippi, Mystic, Charles, Hudson).
Social Studies (Culture) 5.1. spi. 3 Recognize personal, religious, and national celebrations of various
American cultures (i.e., Independence Day, Columbus Day, Native American and American Indian Day,
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and Thanksgiving.
Social Studies (Geography) 5.3. spi. 1 Locate continents and bodies of water (i.e., the Great lakes,
Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans, Colombia, Missouri, Colorado, Rio Grande, Ohio, Tennessee, St.
Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers).
Social Studies (History) 5.01 Understand the causes, course and consequences of the Civil War. 5.5.spi. 2
Recognize military and nonmilitary leaders from the North and South during the Civil War (i.e., Frederick
Douglass, Clara Barton, Chief Justice Roger Taney, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and
Jefferson Davis.
Social Studies (Culture) 6.1. spi. 5 Identify differences between various cultural groups (i.e., European,
Eurasian, Indian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Native American). (History) 6.6. spi. 1 Identify
examples of groups impacting World History (i.e., Muslims, Christians, Mongolians, Vikings, slave
traders, merchants/traders, inventors).
Social Studies (Economics) 7.2 spi. 1 Recognize basic economic concepts (i.e., imports, exports, barter
system, tariffs, closed and emerging markets, supply and demand, inflation, recession, depression).
Social Studies (Culture) 8.1. spi. 2 Identify cultures that contributed to the development of the United
States (i.e., Native Americans, African, British, Scottish, Irish, German). 8.1. spi. 3 Recognize the
influence of science and technology on the development of early American colonial cultures (i.e.,
compass, shipbuilding, food storage, printing press, financial markets, weaponry, transportation).
(Economics) 8.2. spi. 9 Analyze in economic terms, (i.e., climate, triangle trade, infrastructure,
topography), Why slavery flourished in the South as opposed to the North. (8.4.7 spi. 7 Recognize the
impact of major court decisions have had on American life, (i.e., Marbury v Madison, McCulloch v
Maryland, Dred Scott v Sanford). (History) 8.5. spi. 7 Recognize the historical impact of European
settlement in North America. 8.5. spi. 8 Determine the social, political and economic factors that
contributed to the institution of slavery in America. 8.5.15 Discuss sectional differences brought on by
the Western movement, expansion of slavery, and emerging industrialization. 8.5.19 Indentify the
economic impact of African Americans from slavery to Reconstruction. 8.5.20 Indentify Tennessee’s role
in the Civil War.
Assessment Strategies
1. Oral reports and written reports
2. Peer critiques
Instructional Strategies
1. Students will write a composition detailing what they have learned during the unit.
2. Students will create a time line of major events in the slave trade.
Teacher Resources
1. Teacher Edition Text books
2. SCS framework for Standards-Based, Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
3. Books relating to the slave trade
4. Internet
Student Resources
1. Student’s textbooks: Social Studies, Science,
2. Books relating to the slave trade: Amistad 1 by Charles Harris and John Williams, Juneteenth
Story by Larry G. Batchlor, I was a slave by Donna Wyatt Howell, Early American views on Negro
Slavery by Matthew T. Mellon, Internet