Engaging Great Migration Activity: Choose Your Own Journey

Supplement your Great Migration, Reconstruction, and Civil War units with this experiential exercise to build perspective and content knowledge. 1:1 classrooms are ideal for this activity, but you could easily modify to be whole class or small group. This activity is perfect for kickstarting your studies of the Great Migration, but can be used as a rich supplement at any time.

Students start by reading a scene from a sharecropper's life, then making a choice on what to do next. Each choice is linked to the slide that corresponds to the next action, taking kids on a variety of journeys from the South to the North. The ending scene has an option to start over.

This lesson is consistently one of my students' favorite activities and leads to rich discussions. The final slide has suggested discussion questions.