Teacher Resources
Photo Gallery Project for The Grapes of Wrath
Grade 11
Purpose
- To help students to visualize important scenes from the novel through the use of FSA photographs of the Dust Bowl migrants to California with quotations from the novel as captions.
- To help students to better understand the particular passages in the novel.
Overview
As a final project each student will create an exhibit of at least ten photos that will be added to a class photo gallery that they will display in a public place for others to appreciate.
Procedures
Students will spend time researching the American Memory website for Dust Bowl photos and migrant photos of the 1930’s.
- Search for migrant workers, Dust Bowl, Okies, and Dorothea Lange. Walker Evans is also a photographer who took these particular types of pictures for the FSA.
- Each student should select and print ten photos.
- Each student will search out ten quotations from the novel that will serve as captions for the photos.
- Each photo will be mounted on black construction paper and matted with white matte board to a particular size e.g. 3.5x 5.
- Each photo should be accompanied by a related quotation from The Grapes of Wrath.
- Students will also write a one-page reflection of this project that shows what they have come to understand about the novel. This will be submitted along with the photos.
- Photos will be displayed in the school or local library or some other public space.
References
- Library of Congress - American Memory
- The Grapes of Wrath - by John Steinbeck
NOTE: This project could also be used with The Red Pony or Of Mice and Men
Model
“All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight”(GOW, 347).