McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition · Lesson CI · Part 10: Granada, Hamlet and the Union
107. A New City in Colorado (Helen Hunt Jackson)
Goal: Your student can describe how a frontier town sprang up almost overnight.
You'll need
- The book, open to this lesson
- A notebook and pen
- A dictionary
What's in the book
Adapted from Helen Hunt Jackson's Bits of Travel at Home: a visit to Garland City, a brand-new railroad town in Colorado. The heading is at the bottom of the page.
The lesson, step by step
Words and meanings
Look over the notes and definitions printed at the end of the lesson before you start, so names and hard words don't trip up the reading.
Find Colorado on a map. In the 1870s railroads were reaching the West and new towns grew along them.
Your student picks three unfamiliar words, guesses each meaning from the sentence, then checks a dictionary.
About the author
The book says Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) was born in Amherst, the daughter of Professor Nathan W. Fiske of Amherst College. Late in life she became deeply interested in the Indians; she wrote the novel Ramona and A Century of Dishonor, about wrongs done to them. She had published several books of prose and poetry before.
Read aloud
Read it aloud with your student. Have them list every building or object the writer mentions.
Talk about it
SayHow old was the town when she saw it? What was it made of?
SayWhere did she sleep, and what did she hear as she fell asleep?
SayWhat does the speed of building say about the people there?
SayWould you like to live in a town that new? What would you miss?
Narration
Your student describes Garland City as if writing home from it.
Writing (optional)
Write a letter home from a brand-new town: what it looks like, sounds like, and what is missing.