TEKS Grade 4 Social Studies and Writing Activity: Living Texas History

This activity from Trail Fever author Deborah J. Lightfoot supports the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Fourth Grade, as follows: (4.4) History. The student understands the political, economic, and social changes in Texas during the last half of the 19th century. The student is expected to: (A) describe the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on Texas; (B) explain the growth and development of the cattle and oil industries . . . (4.15) Writing/purposes. The student writes for a variety of audiences and purposes, and in a variety of forms. The student is expected to: (A) write to express, discover, record, develop, reflect on ideas, and to problem solve; (C) write to inform such as to explain, describe, report, and narrate;  (F) choose the appropriate form for his/her own purpose for writing, including journals, letters, reviews, poems, narratives, and instructions. (4.21) Writing/inquiry/research. The student uses writing as a tool for learning and research. The student is expected to: (A) frame questions to direct research;  (C) take notes from relevant and authoritative sources such as guest speakers, periodicals, and on-line searches; (D) summarize and organize ideas gained from multiple sources . . .

 
The Activity: Campfire Tales—Texas Trail Driver Letters

Students experience the trail-driving era by adopting the identities of historical figures and writing letters that might have been written by those young cowboys and cowgirls, chuckwagon cooks, horse wranglers, trail bosses, ranchers, farmers, townsfolk, and other 19th-century Texans.

Resources:

Trail Fever: The Life of a Texas Cowboy, by D.J. Lightfoot (Seven Rivers paperback edition, 2003)
"Cattle Trailing," The Handbook of Texas Online
The Trail Drivers of Texas, J. Marvin Hunter, editor (University of Texas Press, 1993)

Plan:

1.    Prepare by reading Trail Fever to the class or assigning the book for independent reading. If students have Internet access, ask them to locate and read The Handbook of Texas Online article on "Cattle Trailing," or make the article available for in-class reference. Also have the book The Trail Drivers of Texas available for reference.

2.    Ask students to take on the identity of one of the people they learned about from reading Trail Fever. Students may pretend to be any of the following people. They should choose someone with whom they can strongly identify.

Apache raider Kiowa chief Bacon Rind  Ben Borroum Jim Byler Cherokee tribal member Jesse Chisholm Monroe Choate Comanche tribal member Confederate soldier/former soldier Harry Fawcett Captain Fennessy Juan Flores Frontier peace officer Frontier schoolteacher/schoolmaster Frontier shopkeeper Geronimo Kansas homesteader Kiowa tribal member

Mexican landowner/rancher/farmer Mexican raider/bandit Moya family member Rachel Reeves Bill Saunders Emily Elizabeth Saunders George W. Saunders Georgia Saunders Jack Saunders Jonie Saunders Mat Saunders Nancy Saunders Sarah Ann Saunders Thomas Bailey Saunders Henry Scott Thad Swift Swift family member

3.    Ask students to reread the parts of Trail Fever that tell about the historical figure they have chosen to become. Have them use the book's index (included in the paperback edition) to find all mentions of their chosen personality, if they're adopting the identity of a named individual.

4.    Ask students to put themselves in their person's shoes and imagine what they would be thinking and feeling while experiencing what the person experienced.

—A student might imagine, for example, that she is Rachel Reeves Saunders, newlywed. What would she be feeling the night her husband George joins the sheriff's posse and rides to the Moya ranch? Or what is it like for Rachel, the mother of two young daughters, to fall deathly ill with pneumonia?

—A student might imagine that he is Señor Moya, a rancher who is suddenly surrounded by angry gunmen intent on taking revenge for a crime the Moya family had nothing to do with. What would Sr. Moya feel and think when he sees a gun pointed at his head?

5.    Lead students in a prewriting exercise to list or briefly note/brainstorm the emotions, thoughts, and reactions their person might have had. Would the person have felt fear, worry, anger, despair, confusion? Excitement, interest, satisfaction, pride, happiness? Disappointment, loneliness, hunger, sadness? Encourage students to use their imaginations to "live the life and think the thoughts" of their chosen personality. Point out that professional writers use this technique of putting themselves inside the hearts and minds of their characters. Writing from within produces the best, most powerful and effective writing.

6.    Ask students to write a letter as if they are their chosen personality, telling a loved one about the experience. The letter should go into detail about what happened and what the person felt and thought during the experience.

The loved one to whom the letter is addressed may be a real or an imagined person. A student who has taken on the identity of George Saunders at age 17, for example, might write to his mother (the real Emily Elizabeth Saunders) describing his adventures on the trail to Kansas. Or a student who imagines herself to be a surviving relative of the Swift family might write to an invented figure—a cousin back East, for example—to tell about the murder of Thad and his family. Students who closely identify with their chosen historical figure may easily imagine a loved one with whom that person would wish to correspond.

7.    Remind students to make their writing vivid and precise.

—Encourage them to include descriptive details that convey the sights, sounds, textures, odors, and flavors of the experience (the rumble of a stampede, the smell of dust, the taste of stale water).

—Point out that precise wording is better than vague words and phrases. "The Washita River was deep and running fast" tells more than "The river was dangerous." Encourage students to check the glossary in Trail Fever for help in correctly using the vocabulary of the trail drivers.

—Have the students date their letters accurately, referring to the appropriate chapters in Trail Fever to determine when the event happened. The letters should also give the place, whether specific or general: "Abilene, Kansas" or "Goat Creek, Goliad County, Texas" or "Somewhere in the lava beds near Tularosa, New Mexico."

Extras:

1.    Use this activity to teach student-writers about point of view (POV)—the perspective from which a story is told. The three main points of view are first person, third person singular, and third person omniscient.

—In a first-person narrative, the story is told by "I," one of the people involved in the event. The students are writing their letters using a first-person POV.

—Contrast this with Trail Fever, which is written in the third person: a narrator who is not in the story tells what happens.

—Also explain that in the third-person singular POV, the narrator writes from the point of view of a single character, describing or noticing only what that character has the opportunity to see and hear and know. A third-person omniscient narrator is not limited in viewpoint to any one character but can comment on every aspect of the story. Trail Fever is written mainly in the third-person singular, from George Saunders' point of view. Ask students if they can find parts of the story that are told from the third-person omniscient POV—places where the reader learns things George doesn't know.

2.    The students' letters, taken in chronological order, can become the script for a living-history presentation as students (perhaps dressed like their chosen historical figures) read their letters aloud.

3.    Historians and writers rely on letters for details of an historical figure's life and times. Invite D.J. Lightfoot, the author of Trail Fever, to speak to the class about the letters and other original sources she used when writing her biography of trail driver George Saunders.

4.    Students who have assumed an historical identity will better understand that people make history. History isn't a list of dates and facts. History is the story of real individuals and how they lived. Ask students to talk or write about their attitudes toward history and how the Campfire Tales activity affected their attitudes. Encourage students to share their views with the group.

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