Prairie Visions Writing Festival
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.
2022 Prairie Visions Prompts
Women Homesteaders
Learn about women homesteaders and how they affected representation then create a calligramme poem.
Native American Treaties
Take a look at the language surrounding the Indian Removal Act then compose a dictionary poem.
Immigration
Explore your own stories of change. Looking at poems of immigration to explore today's immigrant experiences to see how they connect to our experiences and the immigrants from the 1800s in America.
The Dawes Act
Learn about the Dawes Act and write a memo to respond to Senator Dawes.
Sharing Writing
Feedback Protocol
When giving feedback on your writing for Prairie Visions, we are using the Positive Response Protocol from the NWP. You may use this within the classroom to workshop their pieces.
The protocol is outlined to the right.
