Free Teaching Guides and Teacher Materials

Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials

This teaching guide is designed to enhance students’ mastery of key content and skills in social studies, language arts, and other disciplines through examination of the Salem Witch Trials. It is intended to be used in conjunction with Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials by Sibert Award-winning author Marc Aronson, along with other materials. The lessons will compliment curriculum in the social studies, particularly early colonial American history and McCarthyism, but also language arts, focusing on Arthur Miller’s portrait of the psychology of witch-hunts, The Crucible. Each lesson is designed with multiple objectives in mind, to make the most efficient use of teacher’s time.

• The teaching guide consists of six lesson plans drawn from topics investigated in Witch-Hunt. It is organized around six guiding questions:

• What was the world-view of the accusers and their contemporaries?
• What was the relationship between individuals and authority in Puritan society?
• Why did the accusers do it?
• What is moral courage and what forms did it take during the Salem Witch Trials? (This activity may be used in conjunction with the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library Foundation Profiles in Courage high school essay contest.)
• How were good, evil, and witchcraft understood by the accusers and their contemporaries?
• How does the historian’s work differ from the dramatist’s work in writing about the Salem Witch Trials?

Return to top