Woody Guthrie: A Better World A'Comin'

Display slide 6. Tell students that Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912, learning music throughout his childhood from family and friends. He grew up as the Great Depression, coupled with 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 joined the thousands of people fleeing the dustbowl and migrated to California looking 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 participate in a Gallery Walk. Display slide 7 and distribute copies of the Music Analysis Handout to each student. Explain that there are five gallery walk stations that have a photo of Guthrie paired with a quote placed at different points throughout the room. Students will rotate to each gallery walk 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?

Students should record their inferences, along with relevant evidence from the quote and/or photo, on their handout.

Divide students into four groups, each group starting at a different gallery walk station. Once students are at their assigned gallery walk station, tell them they will have two minutes at each station before rotating to the next.

Once students have completed the gallery walk and have returned to their original groups of 3-4 give students 2-3 minutes to compare their findings. Students should be encouraged to add to their notes based on this small group discussion.

When groups have concluded their conversations, ask each group to share their thinking at this point with the whole class. As students share their hypotheses about why Woody Guthrie created and performed music, ask students 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 reference them during the whole class discussion. Please see the Music Analysis Handout - with Teacher’s Notes for additional information to help facilitate this discussion.

Next, show students this video on slide 12. 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 that helps them answer the question.

After hearing from students, ask students to work with their groups to summarize their findings by completing the sentence in the bottom section of their chart - Woody Guthrie created and performed music…

Then, ask each group to share their response with the whole class. 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 once Guthrie was living in California, he landed a radio show which provided Guthrie with a platform from which he developed his talent for using his 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.