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Economics and Geography Lessons

Grandma Essie's Covered Wagon


MCPS Status of Book as of 4/4/96:
Approved as a Reading/Language Arts Core Book for Grade 5


Title: Grandma Essie's Covered Wagon by David Williams with illustrations by Wiktor Sadowski, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1993)

Lesson Developed by Patricia King Robeson

Literature Annotation: This book is an authentic oral history told to the author by his Grandma Essie. The story starts in Missouri during her childhood days and continues with her family's search for a better life that took them to Kansas, then to an oil-rich town in Oklahoma and finally back to Missouri.

Grade Level: 5

Duration: 3 class periods. ( This lesson could be used with lessons on migration and demonstrates nicely how to use oral history to enhance social studies learning.)

Economic Concepts: Scarcity, Consumption, Opportunity Cost

Geography Themes: Location, Place, Movement

MSPAP Outcomes and Indicators:

Economic Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and current status of economic principles, institutions, and processes needed to be effective citizens, consumers, and workers in American society.

Indicators:

Geography Outcome: Students will develop an understanding of geographic concepts and processes as needed to examine the role of culture, technology, and the environment in the location and distribution of human activities.

Indicators:

Objectives: Students will be able to:

Vocabulary: oral history, hired hand, black gold

Materials:

Teacher Background: Knowledge of migration and regions of the United States and the resources available in the various regions.

Lesson Development:

Review/Motivation:

  1. Ask the students to define the term "oral history". Explain that oral history is having someone tell stories about his/her life. Questions are asked of that person to learn more information about lifestyles, starting with their childhood and continuing until present time.

  2. Tell the students that you are going to read a book to them entitled Grandma Essie's Covered Wagon. The author decided to write the book because, as far back as he could remember, he enjoyed listening to stories. His grandma's father had once boarded Frank and Jessie James and knew Wyatt Earp's cousin. In 1988, at the age of 87, Grandma Essie told her stories and answered questions for her grandson; and he wrote the book.

  3. Divide the students into groups of four and give each group three sentence strips and a magic marker. Explain to them that the story begins when Grandma Essie was born in a log cabin in Duenweg, Missouri in 1901, and follows her family's moves in search of a better life that took them to Kansas, and to an oil-rich town in Oklahoma and finally back to Missouri where she met her husband. The story ends when she marries. Have a student locate the states where Essie lived on a map of the United States.

  4. Instruct the groups to think about the resources, technology and physical features of these states and to write three questions that they might have asked Grandma Essie about her early years. Tell them to write one question on each of the sentence strips.

  5. Have students from each group read the questions which they have written.

  6. Read the story to the students while they listen to see if any of their questions were answered.

Activities:
Story Discussion:
Ask each group of students if any of the questions which they wrote were answered in the story. If a questions was answered, ask the students to explain the answer. If the question was not answered, ask them to explain why they think it was not answered. Continue until all of the groups' questions are addressed.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How would you describe Grandma's family's lifestyle during her early years in Missouri? (Grandma Essie's father worked as a hired hand and grew crops for food. The family members did not know that they were not rich because they were happy and did not have other lifestyles to which they could compare their own.)

  2. Grandma's family traveled to Kansas in search of a better life. What physical features of Kansas would the family have seen as they traveled toward the western corner of the state? (Kansas was flat with prairie grasses, very dry, rocky. Wild animal included wolves, coyotes and foxes.)

  3. How did family members meet their basic needs on their journey? (They had milk from the cow, took some crops with them, and bought food items from farms they passed on their journey.)

  4. How would you desribe the family's new home in the western part of Kansas? (The house was a two story wooden building with a little farm and an orchard. The land was very flat with grass and prairie flowers. The wind was often very strong, and sometimes there were tornados.)

  5. How did Grandma Essie's family use natural, capital and human resources to celebrate Christmas? (Natural resources used: tree with bare branches for a Christmas tree; used a tree to carve a toy horse and make a wagon for presents; popcorn to eat; cranberries for tree decorations. Capital resources used: ax to cut the branches from the tree; tools to carve the toys; Sears-and-Roebuck catalog for decorations on the tree; rags, buttons and yarn to make dolls. Human resources used: Papa, Mama, Kenneth; skills of chopping, woodcarving, popping corn, stringing cranberries, making dolls.)

  6. How did Grandma Essie's papa lose all his money, and why did he have to sell the farm? (A drought occurred which caused him to lose all his crops, and he was not able to pay the bank the money he owed them; so he had to sell the farm and auction off the horses, cows and furniture to pay his debts.)

  7. How did you think Grandma Essie's grandparents felt when her family went to live with them in Oklahoma? Explain your answer. (Accept any reasonable answer. Examples: happy to see them because they hadn't seen them for a long time, glad because now they could tell their grandchildren stories about their childhood.)

  8. Why do you think there weren't any houses in Big Heart? (Oil had just been discovered and banks, restaurants and hotels were being built for the investors, but the workers had to put up tents and live in them until they could earn enough money to build a house.)

  9. Why do you think Grandma's Essie's family moved from Oklahoma? (They worked very hard in the oil fields but didn't earn a great deal of money.)

  10. Why did Grandma Essie's family crate their strawberries and ship them by train? (They had a strawberry business and sold their surplus to markets in other places. Some crates went as far east as New York City.)

  11. What did iron ore have to do with Grandma Essie staying in Missouri? (She met a man, an iron ore miner, who became her husband; and he was able to make a living there and support her and the family they raised.)

  12. What was the opportunity cost to Grandma Essie's family each time they moved? (When they moved from Kansas, they gave up a secure home and happiness in search of a better life. When they moved from Kansas, they had to move in with the grandparents and gave up their own home and privacy. When they moved from Oklahoma, Grandma Essie's papa gave up a job in the oil field to return to Missouri to buy a farm.)

Conclusion/Closure:
Teacher Note: Cut "Facts for the Quilt" into strips and place them in an envelope before beginning this activity.

  1. Give each student an 8" x 8" square sheet of pastel construction paper. Have each student take one strip from the envelope. Explain that each strip contains information about the story. Ask students to volunteer to read their fact and explain how their fact is an example of how people modify and change the environment to satisfy their needs and wants.

  2. Inform the students that each of them is to draw and color a picture on their 8" x 8" square which will depict the information which is on their strip of paper.

  3. Place a 40" x 48" sheet of heavy paper on the floor and have students paste their squares on the paper to make quilt. Display the "quilt" on a bulletin board or classroom wall.


Thoughtful Application:

  1. Divide the students into groups of four. Give each group two sheets of 12" x 18" construction paper and instruct them to fold it in half lengthwise and cut on the folded line to make four. Take each of the 6" x 18" pieces, fold it in half lengthwise and cut on the folded line. Students should have 4 strips of 3" x 18" construction paper. Tell them to paste the four strips together, end to end, to make on 3" x 70" strip. They should report this procedure with the remaining four 3" x 18" strips and paste the two long strips together in order to have one 3" strip approximately 140" long.

  2. Give each a group copy of the Historical Events and Inventions" worksheet. Instruct the students to cut out all of the boxes which name an historical event or an invention and place them in sequential order from early times to the present on the strips of construction paper.

  3. When students have completed their time lines, tell them to study them and circle the technological changes which took place during Grandma Essie's lifetime.

  4. Give each student one sheet of drawing paper and explain that they each are going to add another page to the book. Instruct them to draw a picture of something invented since 1988 for the book and write a paragraph describing how Grandma Essie might have reacted to new invention or technological change which have occurred since she told her story in 1988.

Extension:
Invite a senior citizen to be a guest in your classroom. Have students prepare questions ahead of time and have the students ask the questions during the visit. They can ask the person to tell stories about his/her childhood years or important events which occurred before the students were born. Have the class record the information in a journal and write a short story about this person's life. Encourage the students to draw pictures to go along with their stories.

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Last updated on April 4, 1997
Maintained by John L. Day
<jday@umd5.umd.edu>