Today we began by doing a short in-class writing where students were asked to take two of the annotations that they made as they read Thoreau's A Plea for Captain John Brown, explain the quotations and describe why they were annotated. They were also asked to use those to describe what Thoreau was arguing in the essay overall.
We then watched a clip from Ken Burns' The Civil War, called "The Meteor" which provided some additional perspectives on John Brown. The notetaking sheet that we used with it is posted in the Unit Tab above.
We finished class with a series of fishbowl discussions about Thoreau's essay where we explored the following topics: when (if ever) is violence justified; how should John Brown be remembered; and in what way is John Brown "the most American of us all"?
