8th Grade U.S. History

8th Grade U.S. History covers crops coming to the new world from Africa and linking to pre- and post-Civil War history. This New World section of the garden features plants that the African slaves would have brought with them to the American colonies—brown and white cotton, finger millet, okras, cowpeas, peanuts.

An 8th grade cotton lessons focuses on the invention of the cotton gin and involves the students in actually processing cotton.

Cotton takes a long time to grow, but for the class they harvest it early. The cotton bolls are picked when closed and then hung upside down in the classroom, where they continue to open.

Students  clean the bolls and save the seed, experiencing what it was like to pick cotton all day long, with the cotton bolls’ sharp prickles. Then they pull the fiber out and spin it by hand to make strings.

Meanwhile, they discuss industrialism and the introduction of textile mills. They also learn music—the music of the workers, slaves and white folks alike in the fields and factories.

At the end of the first semester, students harvest these New World crops and make an African stew of the edible ones. According to a history teacher, students remember lessons “ten times better” when they go out into the garden and experience hands-on the lesson they are studying.