What is Prairie Visions?

Welcome to Prairie Visions! Homestead National Historic Park's week-long writing festival for fourth through twelfth grade students. The festival is a unique chance to experience the park through a series of prompts designed by Park Rangers and Nebraska Writing Project teachers.  

The poetry prompts below center on telling the multiples stories of the Homesteading including the Dawes Act, immigration, Native American treaties, and women homesteaders.  Each prompt is designed for one class period and contains both a guided writing lesson from a NeWP consultant as well as an interpretative video from a Homestead Ranger.  The prompts can be shared with classes in any order.

The prompts for Prairie Vision are part of a larger project, No Such Thing as Free Land, creating classroom materials to be used in classrooms or in conjunction with a visit with Homestead.  Larger argumentative units on these topics can be found here.