Common Core Standards
Grade 7
Reading RL.7.9
Compare and contrast a fictional portrayal of a time, place, or character and a historical account of the same period as a means of understanding how authors of fiction use or alter history.
What do you mean, there weren't awesome laser guns during the time of Lincoln? Joking aside, historical fiction can be a great way to teach students about an earlier time period without having them read dry textbooks. Authors also frequently go back in time and write historical novels in order to critique what's happening in their own times (think the Salem witch trials of The Crucible with the McCarthyism of the '50s); it would be a great time to bring that up as you're teaching this standard to students.
Example 1
Here's a lesson to use when students are reading Keeper by Mal Peet.
Have students use online articles and primary sources about soccer to evaluate the use of historical research in fiction. Comparing and contrasting the game of soccer as it is represented in the fictional story and how it has been represented in the real world will be the primary focus of this activity.
Aligned Resources
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: Famous Kids Traveling in Threes (or Fours)
- Teaching Maniac Magee: City Divided
- Teaching Murder on the Orient Express: Deadly Motives
- Teaching Dragonwings: Disasters
- Teaching The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963: Let's Do the Time Warp
- Teaching The Little Prince: Things Passed Down – A Poem
- Teaching The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Modern-Day Toms and Hucks
- Teaching The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963: The Watsons Go On TV
- Teaching Ella Enchanted: TWIST-ed Storytelling
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: Right Brain Versus Left Brain
- Teaching Bridge to Terabithia: Honoring a Loss
- Teaching The Fault in Our Stars: The Sword of Damocles
- Teaching The View from Saturday: Getting To Know a Turtle (Almost)
- Teaching Ella Enchanted: Orphan vs. Orphan
- Teaching And Then There Were None: Putting It All Together
- Teaching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: The Title
- Teaching The View from Saturday: Too Many Narrators? What's Your Point of View?
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: The Quotable Mrs. Who
- Teaching Where the Red Fern Grows: Sometheme Sounds Familiar