Woody Guthrie: A Better World A Comin'

Display slide 6 and share some background about Woody Guthrie’s life. Tell students that Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912 and learned about music throughout his childhood from family and friends. He grew up at a time when the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl devastated Oklahoma, Texas, and the surrounding region. By the time Guthrie was a teenager he had moved to Texas, and from there he joined the thousands of people fleeing the Dust Bowl and migrated to California to look for work. This experience profoundly influenced Guthrie’s early music.

Tell students that to begin their exploration of Guthrie and his music they are going to engage in a Gallery Walk. Display slide 7 and distribute copies of the Woody Guthrie Organizer. Explain that there are four stations at different points throughout the room that each have a photo of Guthrie paired with a quote. Assign students a number from 1-4, and instruct them to start at the Gallery Walk station that corresponds with their assigned number. Students will rotate to each station to analyze both the photo and the quote with their group in an effort to answer the following question:

Why did Woody Guthrie create and perform music?

Once groups are at their assigned station, tell them they will have two minutes at the station before rotating to the next. Students should record their inferences, along with relevant evidence from the quote and photo, in the corresponding space on their organizers.

After students have visited all of the Gallery Walk stations, ask them to return to their original groups of 3-4. Give group members a few minutes to compare their findings, and encourage students to add to their notes based on this discussion.

When groups have concluded their conversations, ask a representative to share the group’s thinking at this point with the whole class. As group members share their hypotheses about why Woody Guthrie created and performed music, ask them to note specific text evidence from the quotes and the photographs to support their responses. Slides 8-11 contain the photos and quotes from the Gallery Walk should you want to refer to them during the whole-class discussion. Refer also to the Woody Guthrie Organizer with Teacher’s Notes for additional information to help facilitate this discussion.

Display slide 12 and show students the Road to Now promo video about Woody Guthrie. As students watch the video, ask them to add information from the video to their chart that helps answer the question, "Why did Woody Guthrie create and perform music?"

After viewing the video, ask several students to share any additional thoughts or evidence with the whole class.

Have students return to their small groups and work together to summarize their findings by completing the sentence in the bottom section of their chart:

Woody Guthrie created and performed music…

Ask someone from each group to share the group’s response with the whole class. During this discussion, add any missing information or clarify any misconceptions that students might have. Encourage students to modify their responses based on the whole-class discussion.

Display slide 13 and summarize the discussion by noting that after Guthrie moved to California, he co-hosted a radio show. The show provided Guthrie with a platform from which he developed his ability to use music as a form of social and political commentary. He used his songs to comment, and in many cases critique, what he saw happening in American society with the hope of promoting change by informing the public about a problem or issue and appealing to their sense of justice. Therefore, to Guthrie, his songs were not purely entertainment but a tool for speaking out against social, economic, and political wrongs. Guthrie loved the possibility of America and spent the rest of his life as an artist and activist helping to create a more just America with the songs that he wrote and performed.