Tech Review 3- Underground Railroad

Scholastic-Underground Railroad-An Escape from Slavery
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/underground_railroad/plantation.htm

This is a great website! What I enjoy most about this site is that it takes students on an actual journey through the Underground Railroad. There are five different areas that the site covers. The areas are Beginning Journey, On the Plantation, Escape, Reaching Safety, and Reaching Freedom. Each one of these sections when clicked on follows the story of Walter who is a slave in Virginia. When each section is selected, Walter reads his story out loud to the students. There are pictures and important facts that can be clicked on to give more information. There are sounds and pictures and in each section it tells the story of how Walter escaped into slavery. It tells how he hid during the day, how he received help, how he knew about safe houses, and what it was like for him to receive slavery. While there is no evidence that the story is true, it does provide a real life example for students. I like that students have questions to answer at the end. They challenge the student's thinking and require a deeper level. In teaching, it is important to help students make connections to their real life and something that is relatable. There are teacher resources to use such as a narrative to follow, teacher's guide, and topics to write on. Scholastic is a respected and trustworthy site that provides great resources for teaching the Underground Railroad.

I think that a connection that could be used to this site is creating an actual Underground Railroad throughout the school. The students would love getting to sneak around school and move from safe house to safe house in order to reach the destination. It would have to be very organized and the help of teaching assistants and others in the school would be needed, but students would love this real life example of the Underground Railroad. This would be best for students 3rd grade and up. It is free to use and is easy to access. Luckily there are no ads or distracting features.