My Top Ten Textas (3, 4, and 5)

3.  Forbes, Esther Hopkins.  Johnny Tremain.  Houghton Miflin Harcourt. (2011).

This novel is set in Boston, Massachusetts in 1773.  Johnny Tremain is a 14 year-old boy who has been apprenticed to a silversmith in Boston.  When Johnny's hand is badly burned in an accident at the silversmith, he becomes a dispatch rider for the Committee of Public Safety.  In this capacity, he meets and interacts with James Otis, John Hancock, John and Samuel Adams, and other Boston patriots.  Johnny is an eyewitness and privy observer to the events that lead up to the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington.

Since this book is written from the viewpoint and the perspective of a 14 year-old boy, roughly the age of the students I will be teaching, this text will make the events leading up to our country's Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War more relevant and interesting to my students.  This text will make important events in this important and dramatic part of our country's history more accessible and more meaningful to my students.  Seeing these historical events through the eyes of a narrator roughly their own age should make this subject matter more interesting than a dry recitation of boring facts about stuffy old men.  I will also point out to my students that this book is written by a woman, and emphasize that women can and do make important contributions to our study of history.

4.  Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (Boston: William D. Ticknor & Company, 1847).

This is one of Longfellow's most famous epic poems.  This poem has had a lasting cultural impact, especially in Nova Scotia and Louisiana, where most of the poem is set.  The poem tells the tale of an Acadian couple separated on their wedding day by the British expulsion of the French-speaking inhabitants of Nova Scotia in 1755, and the bride-to-be's search across the country for her fiancee.  The French-speaking Acadians were expelled from their homes and farms in Nova Scotia because they would not join the British forces and take up arms against the French in the French and Indian War.  The Acadians were dispersed all over the new world, but many ended up in Louisiana where they formed the basis of the Cajun culture.

I will assign this epic poem as an overnight reading for my students.  Then, I will have them break up into groups to re-read and study the poem, directing each group to put together a brief summary of the French and Indian War and a much more in-depth summary of the Acadian diaspora and migration to Louisiana.  I will suggest that they translate sections of the poem into more modern English than Longfellow used or even into dialect, and that they use pictures, maps and other graphic media to illustrate their summary.  I will then have each group make a presentation of their summary to the entire class, with opportunities for brief questions and discussions after each presentation.  I will wrap-up with a more general question, answer and discussion session involving the whole class, with me acting as moderator.

The poem will expose my students to an important historical event from the perspective of the vanquished rather than the victor.  Since the heroine of the poem, Evangeline, is a female, it will cause my students to address events from another gender perspective.  In studying and reporting about the culture that the Acadians established in Louisiana, the Cajun culture, the students will be exposed to history from several cultural perspectives, as well as learning something about those diverse cultures.

I will use the this epic poem by Longfellow in direct conjunction with my next Top Ten Text, a particular YouTube video of the song, Acadian Driftwood, by The Band.

5.   Acadian Driftwood, by The Band, a YouTube video.

Acadian Driftwood was recorded by The Band in 1975, and appears as the fourth track on the album "Northern Lights-Southern Cross".  The lyrics of the song are based on Longfellow's poem, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, and is about the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War.

I chose this particular YouTube video of the song because it is graphically illustrated with pictures and maps related to the Acadian expulsion from Nova Scotia and their eventual settlement in Louisiana.  The video will be shown to the class in conjunction with their initial introduction to the Longfellow poem.  The use of the song and accompanying video will be a useful learning aid to struggling readers, students with problems processing and comprehending subject matter and ELL students.  Since Robbie Robertson took some poetic license in writing the song, it will also be a useful teaching tool in the concept of "poetic license" and in the necessity of closely scrutinizing material for historical accuracy.