Video Links and More for Teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

For 8th grade we are covering US History standards and will be discussing the Civil War. As always, I LOVE to pair a good novel with the era in history we are studying. One of my favorite ways to do this is with a novel unit from Moving Beyond the Page. I may not follow it to a T but I think they have the best novel units (literature guides) around. With that said, we chose to use Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for our novel unit and I wanted to share some of the resources I used to supplement and teach this challenging novel to our co-op. Here's a link to discussion questions and more!

First off we found the audio version of the book via our local library. (We have Hoopla and Libby.) I think it was really important to hear the dialect properly rather than fumbling through it myself. 

Week 1 - I wanted to address the n-word head on, so we watched the following video from 60 Minutes which gave a variety of perspectives surrounding the use of the word. Within our co-op. our kids discussed what they found interesting. We also talked about the n-word then vs. now and societal rules today. It was heavy for the kids but I reminded them that this wouldn't be the topic of discussion every week while reading Huck Finn.

Week 2 - I started this week off with a light-hearted activity. We defined satire and then the kids picked a card at random with a "Huck and Jim Today Prompts." One example was, "what would Huck's walk-up song be?" Click here for the complete list.

Next we watched John Green's Crash Course Part 1 and discussed main ideas such as romanticism vs. realism, irony and examples in Huck Finn. Then we discussed the quote from Twain himself, "where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat."

Week 3 - We dove into dialects and had so much fun with this! First we watched a more formal video outlining dialects from a linguistics perspective. 

Then we watched the comparison of the English language in America, Great Britain, and Australia. We loved this!

Last, we watched this hilarious summary of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a "thug" dialect! (Disclaimer: please watch it first and consider your audience.) We talked about how even though we wouldn't have used the same words to summarize the novel, we still understood, thus the meaning of "dialect."

Week 4 - We covered figurative language. We watched this video and played a matching game with quotes from the novel and figurative language terms. Click here to download matching quotes and definitions with literary terms.

Week 5 - We watched Crash Course Part 2 and reviewed our final projects from Moving Beyond the Page.

Week 6 - We watched the movie, presented final projects and shared a southern meal! So much was covered with this novel! It was a good catalyst for tough conversations and as well as a great experience covering a classic American novel.