Of Mice and Men Webquest You Are About to Embark on a Webquest to Discover What Life Was Like in the 1930S

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Of Mice and Men Webquest You are about to embark on a Webquest to discover what life was like in the 1930s. Of Mice and Men is set in California during the Great Depression. It follows two migrant workers, George and Lennie, as they struggle to fulfill their dreams. In order to better understand their plight, you will be exploring several websites to increase your background knowledge before getting into the book. Check out the websites listed below to help you answer the following questions. The questions should help you start thinking about some of the writing topics. Websites Use the entire hour to do your research, spending at least a few minutes at each website. Migrant Workers: http://www.neabigread.org/books/grapesofwrath/teachers/grapes_handout03.pdf http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tsme.html http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap03.html Dust Bowl/Great Depression: http://www.neabigread.org/books/grapesofwrath/teachers/grapes_handout01.pdf http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/index.html http://www.awesomestories.com/history/great‐depression/story‐preface http://www.neabigread.org/books/grapesofwrath/grapes03_context.php http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/depression/photoessay.htm Salinas Valley, California: http://www.mtycounty.com/pgs‐misc/farmland.html http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Belmont_HS/mice/cal2.html http://www.salinas.com/ Questions Answer the following questions after using the websites to conduct your research in a Word document or on your own sheet of paper. You should have a well‐developed paragraph response for each question. For each question, you should reference at least two of the sources to get all of the points. 1. What are the geographical features of the Salinas Valley? What kinds of jobs are available there? 2. What were the main features of the Great Depression? (What are the basic, most important facts?) 3. What were some of the causes of the Great Depression? 4. How did the Dust Bowl/Great Depression affect California? 5. Who were migrant workers and how did the Great Depression affect them? 6. What were some of the struggles that migrant workers faced?.

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Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck Discussion & Activities Guide Parental warning: This story contains profanity and mature themes. Parents and teachers should preview before determining if this is an appropriate book for their students. Discuss the following elements with your student, as a whole class, or pair students up for discussion and then present ideas back to whole group/class. John Steinbeck Research Steinbeck’s life and background. In many literary works the setting (where the story takes place) is different from the context (when & where the writer lived), but in Steinbeck’s stories the setting is when and where he lived. Steinbeck was born in 1902, in Salinas, California, which is also the setting for Of Mice and Men. As a teenager, Steinbeck spent summers working as a hired hand on ranches, and many of his characters are based on people he met. Discuss how a writer is reflected in his or her writing. Why is it important to understand who a writer is when reading his/her work? Why do you need to be aware of bias and agenda? Discuss how the story Of Mice and Men specifically reflects Steinbeck. Encourage students to be as specific as possible, with passages from the text. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 Watch his full speech at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SKEODtaQUU Steinbeck declared, “…. the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation.
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