Week Eight: Lesson plans

In order to have my students connect with the setting of Fever, 1793, I have my middle school students log on to http://teachingamericanhistory.org/convention/map on the Internet to begin their web quest. Fever, 1793 takes place in Philadelphia. During this time in history, Philadelphia was the capital of the newly formed United states.

As students pull up the website they are greeted with a colored map of old Philadelphia and some of the famous landmarks of the day, along with street names and hyperlinks on famous land marks. In Fever, 1793 Laurie Halse Anderson has taken great steps to make sure her street names coincide exactly with the streets of old Philadelphia.

We begin this lesson with our list of addresses and landmarks we've collected from Anderson's novel. The students click each of the landmarks to find pictures and information concerning old Philadelphia as well as present day pictures and links to continue their web quest. We utilize this information to create our own wall map of old Philadelphia plotting where the novel takes Mattie, the main character, during each chapter of the book.

The students are always curious as to why the capitol of the U.S. didn't stay in Philadelphia as well as how the City of Brotherly Love chose to maintain the historical buildings and build their modern structures around them.

Students are also amazed at the history of Washington Square, it's existence, and it's utilization as a grave yard for Revolutionary War soldiers and well as Yellow Fever victims.

I have several different angles in which I utilize this web quest, depending upon which chapters we are focusing on in our studies. Creating the wall map and plotting the main character's navigation through the novel and the city is just one piece.

This is an overview and the links provided can take you to the history of Dr. Rush, the consulting physician during this outbreak of Yellow Fever in 1793, to Blanchard's Balloon and his attempts at flying.