What was life like for a slave in the Americas?

This KS3 lesson should take around two hours to complete. The Power Point leads students through all activities with accompanying resources included (although for the research stage the Power Point refers to school textbooks as one source of information and I’m obviously unable to include copies of pages I’d use. Wikipedia has a very detailed page on this topic and the link is included).

Aims and Objectives:

• To know basic facts about a slave’s life and work.
• To extend this knowledge and understanding through group research and presentation.
• To be able to empathise with the psychological impact these conditions must have had upon the people effected, considering coping mechanisms.

Activities include an inference starter using “The Sabbath among slaves” drawing which appears at first-glance to to be far less sinister than it actually is. Students then make further inferences with support from a range of images. They begin their research into mental/physical health, work and punishments using a ten minute video before breaking into groups of four to specialise in one area. The class collectively produce an assessment criteria for their poster presentations before researching and creating their posters. The following lesson, their poster presentations are peer assessed using their criteria and I use this as a competition. Finally, students add an entry to their ongoing slave diary about living and working conditions.