Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

Harris and Me takes place on a farm in the early 1950s. What do you know about farm life either during this time period or in the present? How do you think farm and family life might have been different during the 1950s compared to modern times? Consider the fact that this decade followed World War II, and think of how values and technology have changed since the 1950s.

Teaching Suggestion: Some students may have little or no familiarity with life during this time period. Still, they can be encouraged to imagine what life might have been like after a war, how people might have lived, how families might have spent their time before the introduction of things like the internet and cell phones, and whether their knowledge of farming today might apply to farming of the past.

• “1950s Horse Power Farmer”: photograph showing a farmer from the 1950s using horses to pull his tractor
• “One Day on the Farm in the 1950s”: genuine footage of a day in the life on an American farm in the 1950s