THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS APPLIED ENGLISH CENTER BETUSA Program

FIGHTING AGAINST SLAVERY IN KANSAS TERRITORY

Paulo Lcio Scheffer Lima

Instructor: Lynette Hosek Developing EFL Lessons Based on US History and Culture

Lawrence, 2013

FIGHTING AGAINST SLAVERY IN KANSAS TERRITORY

This paper is a partial report on the contents studied in the BETUSA (Brazilian English Teachers in the USA) program held in the University of Kansas from January 16 to February 23, 2013. The opportunity to gather authentic material to take back to classes in Brazil was given in the course entitled Developing EFL Lessons Based on US History and Culture. As part of the syllabus, field trips were taken to places of historical and cultural value in the cities of Topeka, KS, Kansas City, KS, Kansas City, MO and Independence, MO. In each of these places we were exposed to visuals, explanations, tours, visitations, videos, brochures, newspapers, posters, and several other realia. The purpose of this paper is to show the use of one of the resources collected to teach English in Brazil. It will demonstrate the necessary adaptations to make the material accessible to a chosen group of students, situating the task in a reasonable content unit and presenting activities that will match the material selected and involve students, encouraging their participation. The material selected comes from the Kansas State Historical Society website (http://kshs.org). The society is in charge of the preservation of Kansas history through several actions and sites, including the Kansas Museum of History and the Capitol House, both in Topeka, the capital of Kansas. The KSHS website is full of historical information for students, researchers and teachers and the section entitled Read, Kansas! offers a variety of lessons for primary, intermediate, middle school and high school students.

Fighting Against Slavery in Kansas Territory comes from the middle school section, which consists of texts for 7th and 8th graders. It will be adapted to suit the needs of a large class of high school sophomores, who are beginning to be exposed to English. Original text (see also picture 01): Fighting Against Slavery in Kansas Territory Many people came to Kansas Territory to fight against slavery. In New England, emigrant aid societies were formed. They organized groups of antislavery settlers to come to Kansas Territory. Many of these people were abolitionists. They believed that slavery was morally wrong and should be abolished. Abolitionists not only wanted to prevent Kansas from becoming a slave state, they wanted to end slavery everywhere. Most people who came to Kansas Territory to fight against slavery were not abolitionists. Many wanted to stop the spread of slavery into the territories. These people were called free-staters. Some people felt that slavery gave the South an unfair economic advantage. Slave owners could make more money using slave labor to grow crops. Those who did not own slaves could not compete. Free-staters wanted to prevent this economic inequality in Kansas. Violence would sometimes break out between antislavery and proslavery settlers. Tensions grew along the Kansas-Missouri border. Missouri was a slave state and many of its citizens wanted to keep antislavery settlers out of Kansas. Jayhawkers was the name given to antislavery fighters from Kansas. Jayhawkers fought against Missourians during border wars. Many Northerners raised money and supplies for antislavery settlers in Kansas. Henry Ward Beecher was such a man. Beecher was a minister and a writer who worked to end slavery. Although he never lived in Kansas Territory, his followers founded the Beecher Bible and Rifle Colony in Wabaunsee County. Beecher, an abolitionist, raised money for rifles to arm the antislavery settlers in Kansas. Beechers older sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the author of the antislavery book, Uncle Toms Cabin. In 1856 Henry Ward Beecher wrote a small pamphlet called Defence of Kansas. He wrote against the spread of slavery into Kansas Territory and asked for money and support for the antislavery cause. What is presented here is an excerpt from the pamphlet. (Kansas: 2006)

Illustration 01: original text

Adaptation of the text: The adaptation of the material takes into account the little exposure students have had to English language and the general idea of the unit being taught. Content-based instruction is to be used together with a four-skill approach in this lesson, but it is assumed that the class is already familiar with the verbs in the simple past tense, taught in previous lessons. Students will receive a handout for this activity as shown below:

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL

NAME: ____________________________ NUMBER: _____ CLASS: _______ ENGLISH LANGUAGE READING ACTIVITY JUNIOR TERM DATE: 02/21/13

Fighting Against Slavery in Kansas Territory

PRE-READING: Look at the US map. Which states are familiar to you?

READING: Scan the text below and fighters from Kansas.

circle the nickname of the antislavery

Many people went to Kansas Territory to fight against slavery. People in New England organized groups of antislavery colonists to go to Kansas Territory. Many of these people were abolitionists. They believed slavery was wrong and had to be abolished. Abolitionists did not want Kansas to become a slave state and they wanted to end slavery everywhere. Many people who came to Kansas Territory to fight against slavery were not abolitionists. They wanted to stop the spread of slavery into the territories. These people were the free-staters. Some people thought that farmers in the South made much money because they had slaves in their plantations. Farmers without slaves could not compete. Free-staters didnt want this economic inequality in Kansas. Sometimes there was violence between antislavery and proslavery colonists from the Kansas-Missouri border. Missouri was a slave state and many of its people didnt want antislavery colonists in Kansas. Antislavery fighters from Kansas got the nickname Jayhawkers. Jayhawkers fought against Missourians in border wars.
from http://kshs.org/teachers/read_kansas/pdfs/m11card01.pdf

Illustration 02: handout

The length of the text respects the little experience students have with the language. The omission of the final paragraphs allows the students to read the passage more quickly and attentively. The definition of a jayhawker at end of the text purposefully gives the teacher an opportunity to link with the KU basketball team they may already have heard about, if time allows it. Words are eliminated and synonyms are chosen so as to display little more than cognates and verbs that have already been taught. The handout is composed of a single page due to the shortage of copies at some public school, including the one in question (no copies are actually allowed for teaching activities, only formal assessment; some negotiation will be necessary in order to get the handout printed for this class). Further reading exercises will have to be presented as a multimedia projection, as well as the postreading discussion.

How to deal with vocabulary: The map inserted before the passage has been found by Google, but only containing the outlines. The colored areas and border will show students the necessary vocabulary related to the geographical vocabulary in the text, as will the directions inserted in the bottom lefthand corner. Two highlighted states, namely Nebraska and Ohio, are not in the passage, but will be used as a link with the previous activity, a video about John Brown. The rest of the new vocabulary will be presented before the handout is given away as shown in the procedures below.

Teaching Procedures: Students will have explored two minutes of the video John Browns Stand Against Slavery (THERAVENSWING: 2006) becoming, thus, familiar with the theme of the text.

Before they receive the handout there will be work on vocabulary, starting from the statement John Brown was a fighter. In order to make the word fighter (as well as fight and fought) make sense, involving students, some pictures of sports will be projected and questions will be asked (and students will be encouraged to answer them in English), until a transition is made to the theme of political fights, as seen below. TEACHER: Do you know the word fighter? How many fighters do you see in the picture one, two, three? [Show illustration 03] Do you know the name of one of them? What can you say about the picture? Anderson Silva fought against Yushin Okami in 2011. [Show this sentence on the board or multimedia projector]. Can you give other examples of fighters? Karate fighter

[illustration 04], judo fighter [illustration 05], taekwondo fighter [illustration 06], MST fighter [illustration 07], (MST is a group of homeless Brazilians who fight for the redistribution of plantation lands. It may be very familiar to them, so the purpose is to show them that fighting is not always a sport, as is the case with the reading passage.) [Go back to sentence about illustration 1 and make gestures to demonstrate the preposition against and the simple past of fight.] Who fought against slavery in Brazil? (Tiradentes did.) Who fought against slavery in the USA? (John Brown did.) But not only John Brown.

Illustration 03 (fighter fought)

Illustration 04 (karate fighter)

Illustration 05 (judo)

Illustration 06 (taekwondo)

Illustration 07 (MST)

Other vocabulary will also be shown using the multimedia projector:

Illustration 08 (many)

Illustration 09 (few)

Illustration 10 (some)

Illustration 11 (spread)

Illustration 12 (states, border, directions)

Before the presentation of illustration 12, students will receive the handout and work in pairs on the pre-reading activity, orally. As the teacher explains the activity, the pronunciation models will be shown as the American states are shown in a Prezi presentation. The teacher will then ask volunteers to report their findings. The students will have one minute, then, to silently scan for the answer in the reading exercise. As individuals complete this phase, they may attract the teacher to their desks, who will evaluate and/ or redirect their answers.

A further reading activity should be some detailed comprehension questions or gap-fill exercises written on the board or projected on the screen. They should be kept simple and direct to give the students a feeling they can understand the activity, especially because most if not all instructions in this lesson will be given in English. In order to motivate these students, the teacher could read the text with special intonation and mime verbs and show vocabulary before they answer the questions A suggestion to be used as post-reading must include some physical activity. The teacher will ask students to put away their handouts. As there are fifteen sentences in the passage, the teacher could divide each sentence in three parts and give each student at random a slip of paper containing one of these parts (considering a class of forty-five students). As students move around and form groups of three, they should call out their completed sentences and get points for correctness, speed and pronunciation. Just for fun, they could them try to reconstitute the text and perform a choral reading of the sentences in groups in the correct order.

Conclusion: Authentic materials can provide great opportunities for learning a foreign language. Using material collected in the United States to teach English can motivate students to learn new concepts through English rather than learning the language with direct focus on grammar, skills and vocabulary. However, it is necessary to adapt the material selected so that it fits the students level of knowledge about the language and the teachers goals.

References: KANSAS State Historical Society. Fighting Against Slavery in Kansas Territory. In: Read Kansas! Kansas, Kansas Department of Education: 2006. http://kshs.org/teachers/read_kansas/pdfs/m11card01.pdf THERAVENSWING. John Browns Stand Against Slavery. National History Day, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhu433DUaDw on February 14, 2013.