This Goodly Land

Resources for Teachers and Librarians

Sample Lesson Plans

Grades K-2

• Creating a Wall Story
• Creating Comic Strips
• Literature Circles with Primary Students Using Self-Selected Reading
• Two Thumbs Up! Get Students Writing and Publishing Book Reviews, substitute books by Alabama authors
• Tell Me a Story
• It’s All Relative
• A Place to Rest
• Mountain Wedding
• Mama and Me and the Model T
• Why Can’t I Do That?
• Seven Brave Women
• My Brave Family

Grades 3-5

• Book Report Alternative: Creating a New Book Cover
• Book Report Alternative: The Elements of Fiction
• Technical Writing and Reading Using Board Games, substitute a novel by an Alabama author
• Sharing Favorite Books Using Interactive Character Trading Cards
• Inventor Research
• Locating Alabama Counties
• Angela Johnson’s Bird
• Count Your Way Through the Writing Process
• Shadow of Greatness
• Full Steam Ahead
• Ghostly Narratives
• Trouble Dolls
• Round and Round Again
• Taking a Stand in the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Grades 6-8

• Book Report Alternative: Creating Careers for Characters
• Literary Characters on Trial: Combining Persuasion and Literary Analysis, substitute a book by an Alabama author
• Lights, Character, Action: Interviewing a Book Character
• Biography Project: Research and Class Presentation, substitute Alabama authors for topics, use This Goodly Land as a research tool
• Multiculturalism in the Hands of African-American Authors from Alabama

Grades 9-12

• A Biography Study: Using Role-Play to Explore Authors’ Lives, substitute Alabama authors
• “Old Southwest” Humorists and George Washington Harris, add works by Joseph Glover Baldwin, Johnson Jones Hooper, and John Gorman Barr
• Spend a Day in My Shoes: Exploring the Role of Perspective in Narration, To Kill a Mockingbird
• Profiles in Courage: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
• Style: Defining and Exploring an Author’s Stylistic Choices, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Profiles in Courage: To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys Trial
• Folklore in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Alabama Authors and History
• Exploring To Kill a Mockingbird
• Do We Need Tolerance?
• Narrative Graffiti

Additional lesson plans may be found at the Alabama Learning Exchange lesson plans page, the Thinkfinity Browsable Lesson Plan Index page, and the McREL Lesson Plans page.