Book

To Kill a Mockingbird

Six-year-old Scout is forced to face a new, frightening side of her rural southern town when her attorney father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.

Last Updated: May 13, 2020

Book

Language

English — US

Subject

English & Language Arts
History

Racism

Six-year-old Scout Finch and her brother Jem have grown up in a rural south filled with racial inequality. When their attorney father takes on the job of defending a black man accused of raping a white woman, Scout and Jem are forced to face a side of their town that they had never seen before. To Kill a Mockingbird tackles the challenging issues of race, rape, and innocence through the words of a young person learning about the world they live in.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Date of Publication: July 1960

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Collection

Find the teaching strategies, media, and online resources referenced throughout the Teaching Farewell To Manzanar guide.

Families of Japanese ancestry awaiting the arrival of a train that will take them to Merced detention center, during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II

Lesson

Students connect the moral development of To Kill a Mockingbird's central characters to the moments in their lives that have shaped their sense of right and wrong.

A man named Floyd Burroughs stands with four children on a wooden house porch.

Lesson

Students explore how race, class, and gender create the moral universe that the characters inhabit in To Kill a Mockingbird.

The exterior of a theatre called "Rex Theatre for Colored People."

Lesson

Students consider how Harper Lee’s decision to tell To Kill a Mockingbird through the eyes of young Scout impacts readers' understanding of the novel.

Collection

Learn how to incorporate civic education, ethical reflection and historical context into a literary exploration of Harper Lee's novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.

Collection

Enrich your teaching of To Kill a Mockingbird with this set of videos, photographs, and readings that will help students contextualize the novel.

Lesson

Students explore the strategies, risks, and historical significance of the 1963 Chicago school boycott, while also considering bigger-picture questions about social progress.

Crowd fills LaSalle Street between City Hall and building housing Board of Education as hundreds of demonstrators marched in Chicago on Oct. 22, 1963 following a one-day boycott of public schools.

Collection

Use this rich collection of Reconstruction era primary sources, videos, and a 3-week unit to engage your students in this pivotal period in US history and its legacies today.

African American and Radical Republican members of the South Carolina Legislature in the 1870s.

Collection

Enrich your teaching on the Reconstruction era with these primary source documents and images.

Portraits superimposed on an image of the American flag

Lesson

Students review the First Amendment, understand the importance of a free press, and consider how that freedom can conflict with other societal needs through journalists’ experiences in Ferguson.

Newspaper front page featuring story about protests and police in Ferguson.

Lesson

Students identify the responsibilities of citizen watchdogs, summarize strategies for combatting confirmation bias and responsibly consuming and sharing news and information, and complete a culminating essay.

Lesson

Students define explicit, implicit, and confirmation bias, and examine why people sometimes maintain their beliefs in the face of contradictory information.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

At a Glance

Language

Subject

To Kill a Mockingbird

Borrow

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To Kill a Mockingbird

At a Glance

Language

Subject

To Kill a Mockingbird

Borrow

You might also be interested in…

Media and Strategies for Teaching Farewell to Manzanar

Moral Growth: A Framework for Character Analysis

Maycomb's Ways: Setting as Moral Universe

Scout as Narrator: The Impact of Point of View

Teaching Mockingbird

Teaching Mockingbird Media and Readings

10 Questions for the Past: The 1963 Chicago Public Schools Boycott

The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy

The Reconstruction Era Primary Sources

The Importance of a Free Press

Citizen Watchdogs and the News

Confirmation and Other Biases

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