Essential Questions:

• Why did Arthur Miller choose to write a play about the Salem Witch Trials?
• What connection is there between the events of the Salem Witch Craft Trials and the McCarthy Era, the time period in which Miller wrote his play? 
• How do writers use literature as a means of creating social and political change?
• What can we do as individuals to prevent situations like these from happening again?
  

THE RESEARCH PROCESS

TASK #1: CHOOSE A GROUP AND A TOPIC

• Choose groups of 3 or 4
• Download the KWL Chart and begin filling it out.

TASK #2: CHOOSE A FOCUS TOPIC AND BRAINSTORM

• Choose a focus topic from this list, and tell your teacher what you have chosen. Only one group may choose a topic.

POSSIBLE TOPICS
Senator Joseph McCarthy
The Red Scare and Communism
The House of Un-American Activities Committee
The Hollywood Ten
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Edward Murrow
Arthur Miller
Puritanism
Witch-Hunts and the History of Accusations of Witchcraft

• Once your group has chosen its topic, you will open up Inspiration and begin doing your initial brainstorm for keywords that you could use to research your topic. Use this brainstorm to decide how to divide up different parts of your topic and assign each group member a part to research.

TASK #3: RESEARCH

• Download the Research Journal and write in your topic, the broad research questions, your keywords for searching that you came up with while using Inspiration.
• As you find sources, write down or copy and paste the source citation information into your research journal.
• Take notes about each source. Make sure that you are thinking about it and not just copying information. If you do copy down information from a source, make sure that you put it in quotation marks.
• Use the right hand column to help you organize the information that you find.

TASK #4: COLLABORATE AND EVALUATE SOURCES

• Meet with your group members and review the information that each of you found.
• Use the evaluation sheets that your teacher passed out to you called "Web Site Analysis" and "Examine and Evaluate". Using these worksheets, evaluate the different sources of information that each group member collected. Determine which sources are the most reliable and useful. Write detailed notes about each article and then make copies of each article for all the members of your group.

TASK #5: FORM NEW GROUPS AND SHARE INFORMATION

• At this point in your research you will be working with group memebers as you read The Crucible.
• Each member of the group should share the research that he/she gathered while in the orginal expert groups. All members of the new group should have copies of each member's research.
• Your group will meet after every Act to discuss how aspects of the events and people that you researched are reflected in the play. As you are doing your reading, use the Collating Chart to help you chart the events in the play and use the Compare and Contrast Chart to analyze the similarities and differences between the Witchcraft Trials and the McCarthy Era. Your group will use the questions below to focus your reading and discussion:
  • Concept Forming Questions: What connections are there between the events of the Salem Witch Craft Trials and the McCarthy Era? How do writers use literature as a means of creating social and political change? How can literature help to create change in a society?

TASK #6: WRITE YOUR RESEARCH REPORT

• After you have finished reading the play and discussed it with your group and as a whole class, you will write a research report using the information that you gathered and the information gathered by your group members. Your research report should answer the Concept Forming Questions above.
• ALTERNATIVE OR ADDITIONAL TASK #6B -
  • As a group, you will create your own short play that highlights a modern day social or political problem without directly talking about it.  You can wither film your skit and edit it using iMovie or perform your play live in front of the class.
  • Students watching the presentations will be asked to identify what current social issue is being expressed through the skit.  The ability of the group to clearly connect and communicate the social or political issue will be the basis for the evaluation of the plays.

TASK #7: FINISH KWL AND REFLECTION

• Now that you have finished your research and completed your project, you have hopefully learned a lot about the Salem Witch Craft Trials, the McCarthy Era, The Crucible, and the use of literature as a means of creating social and political change. You will now, again turn to your KWL Chart and fill in the final column about what you learned during the course of this unit.
• In addition, you will write a reflection paper in which you discuss the research you did about the McCarthy Era and the Salem Witch Trials, and in addition, you will reflect on the process of turning a modern social or political issue into a play.