Salem Witch Trials Lessons Plans: Understanding the World Behind the Accusations

As the nights grow longer and the leaves fall from the trees, I feel the yearly call of all things creepy and macabre.  It’s witch season! 

But if you’ve spent any time on this blog, you probably already know that few things bother me as much as a cutesy gimmick—especially when it’s being used to teach the government-sanctioned execution of innocent people. Still, I love learning about the dark times of the distant past—especially when it can teach us a thing or two about the, well, dark times of the present.

What I find most fascinating and important about the Salem Witch Trials is that while they grew out of some very classic human behavior—groupthink, paranoia, scapegoating—they were also very much the product of a particular time and place.

We tend to imagine people from the past as “just like us!” but the people living in colonial Massachusetts were actually very different in some significant ways.  They saw themselves as living on the front lines of a battle between good and evil, in a place where spirits and devils were among them every day—and they really cared a lot about their sick cattle.

And still, as different as they were from Americans today, they also had a major impact on a lot of the core beliefs of this country.  

The way we value hard work, our tendency to frame complicated issues as black-and-white battles between good and evil, and the way we know money can’t buy happiness but still want to find that out for ourselves are all, whether we like it or not, woven into the fabric of this country.

So my goal for a unit on the Salem Witch Trials is for students to enjoy the fascinating drama of the accusations, yes, but more importantly, to understand the beliefs and worldview that made those accusations possible.

The challenge is helping students enter that unfamiliar world without lecturing them through the entire unit. Here’s how I approach it in a day-by-day schedule.

Day 1: Anne Bradstreet Poetry

The first day of the unit has students reading two poems by Anne Bradstreet.  I admit that the writings of a Puritan woman living hundreds of years ago might not sound like an automatic win for high school students, but I’ve found that following my usual routines for poetry, no matter what century it’s from, helps students to really tackle the challenging language, understand the themes, and ultimately, learn more about their own views on a topic.  

So we start with a bellringer freewrite.  As the two poems that students will analyze, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” and “Verses upon the Burning of our House, July 18th, 1666,” deal with themes of love, life, materialism, and the afterlife, I have students write on prompts like “Biggie Smalls said, ‘I don’t know what they want from me / It’s like the more money we come across / The more problems we see.’ Do you think money can buy happiness? How might having more money cause more problems?” These prompts give students some awareness of their own views before we start reading the poems—so they can later see where they agree with Bradstreet and where they differ.

After that, we read through the poems together as a class, and then I have students work through close reading questions on the poems in small groups or with partners.  These poems are challenging for sure, so I have students read through them a few times, looking up any words they’re unsure of, until they have a good idea of the basic narrative or “plot” of the poems. 

Then they work through the questions.  Rather than jump right into high level analysis, I have them start with more straightforward questions like “What is the speaker’s first reaction when she sees her house burning? Quote and explain one line.” Or “The speaker in the poem claims to be very sure of her love for her husband; however, what in the first few lines makes it seem as if she isn’t so sure? Quote and explain at least one line.”  After working through those more concrete questions, students can move on to analyze the speaker’s views on things like death, love, and material possessions.

Ultimately, we’re working toward a high-level discussion of the speaker’s inner conflict: she knows she should place God above all else, but she also deeply values her material possessions and her love for her husband. The questions guide students there step by step, allowing them to uncover that conflict for themselves.

For homework, I get students started on reading an in-depth article from The New Yorker about the Salem Witch Trials which will really help them to pull together the different sources and texts of the unit when they complete the graded discussion in a few days.

Days 2-3: Cotton Mather

The second and third day of the unit get students digging even deeper into the unique mind of the Puritan. The passages excerpted in these lesson plans all come from Cotton Mather’s book The Wonders of the Invisible World, published in 1693.

Again, after a bellringer freewrite, we delve into a close reading of the excerpts. 

My strategy for keeping students from rage-quitting when confronted with the mildly unhinged writing of this Puritan minister is to start slow and small.  So, for example, the first question asks them to analyze the title of the book, The Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Trials of Several Witches Lately Executed in New-England. Getting students to really unpack the suggested meaning behind words like “wonders” which suggests something marvelous, fascinating, or inexplicable, and “account,” which makes the book sound straightforward and unbiased, gets them primed for the contradictions and paradoxes to come.  

The questions then move students through the text step by step, and I make sure to anchor each question in a specific line or phrase. For example, to help students notice how Mather presents himself as a humble servant of God, I direct them to the phrase “Least among the Children of New-England” and ask, “In the sentence that begins ‘Therefore it is…,’ how does Mather describe himself?”

We then move on to “The Trial of Martha Carrier” which is both very similar to Arthur Miller’s portrayal of the trials and very different.  For one thing, there is quite a lot about cattle—sick cattle in particular.  But it’s also so much fun for students to read testimonies that are almost word-for-word the same in The Crucible.

Again, we move piece by piece before getting to more higher-level discussion. I think it’s interesting for students to note that actually the witch trials were kind of mundane in a lot of ways, and when they read the testimonies of various witnesses they learn a lot, again, about their worldview. What they’ll see is how people seem to be fairly suspecting of their neighbors, that they value first-hand testimony and don’t seem to require physical or other proof, and that they have a difficult time explaining many phenomena in their lives.

The final section students read is a very short but very dense passage in which Mather expresses his ideas about what he sees as a witchcraft crisis in New England and the historical importance of that moment.  

Students are then able to work through higher-level questions that get them discussing the contradictions and complexities in the text.

Students see that Mather views his historical moment as exceptional: writers have an essential role in the battle between good and evil, people like him are especially vulnerable to attack, and the boundary between the visible and invisible worlds has grown unusually thin.

Together, these ideas reveal the distinctive Puritan worldview behind the trials.

I’m sure that I could present a lot of this material with a quick slideshow, but I really think that showing students that they can wade into such an old, dense text and actually get something out of it is worth the effort.  Plus, there is something kind of thrilling and dark about reading the actual words of the time.

Days 4-5: “Half-Hanged Mary” by Margaret Atwood

I honestly don’t remember how I first discovered this poem but wow am I glad I did.  Based on the astonishing real story of Mary Webster—hanged as a witch and left suspended all night, yet alive by morning—this contemporary feminist poem by Margaret Atwood adds so much to a study of the Puritans and the Salem Witch Trials.

While this poem is not hundreds of years old, it offers its own challenges—mostly that it’s very long—but I take advantage of its compelling story, the relevant themes, and the way its time-stamped sections break the poem into manageable pieces to make it more accessible for students.

Before reading we… wait for it… start with freewrites!  Since the poem deals with a lot of big questions around pain, society, power, change, isolation, and perseverance and so many other themes, I get students writing on prompts like “What are some of the effects of rumors?” Or “Write about a time when you felt that no one had your back.”

Next, I have students read the poem on their own and make a comic or storyboard for each section of the poem.  This helps students to make a very rough outline of the narrative of the poem in a low-key way.

Finally, they work through close reading questions focus on important details of the poem as well as on poetic elements. We start with questions that focus more on comprehension like “Who is the speaker of the poem? What is unique or different about her perspective or point of view?” And eventually work toward more higher-level questions that get students examining the paradoxes of the last two lines of the poem. 

What I really appreciate about this poem is the perspective it gives on the themes of the unit as a whole—as much as I value the voices of the time period, I also really like how a modern feminist perspective brings themes to the forefront that are less obvious with the older writing.

Day 6: Student-Led Graded Discussion

By this point, students have done the background work and have plenty to say, so I step back and let them take over. For a graded discussion, I ask them to come prepared with their own questions, observations, and important passages from the texts—but I don’t give them a list of discussion questions. Part of the challenge is deciding for themselves what is worth discussing.

The day of the discussion, I put no more than fourteen students in a tight circle, keep myself outside it (easier said than done but I force myself to stay quiet and not try to manage for once), and let the conversation go wherever they take it. As long as it remains grounded in the texts and ideas from the unit, I don’t interfere. If there are more than fourteen students in the classroom, I’ll split the time in two so that everyone gets the chance to participate in a smaller group.

As the students in the inner circle talk, I score their comments: three points for a comment supported by a quotation, two for one supported by a specific example, and one for a relevant comment without specific evidence. Once a student has earned an A+, I may remove them from the circle, which gives quieter students more room to enter the conversation.

It’s actually surprising how wide-ranging and deep the conversation can become when I’m not directing it and students aren’t simply trying to guess what the teacher wants them to say. Left to follow their own ideas, they often make connections I never would have thought to ask about.  

Days 7-8: In-Class Synthesis Essay

The last two days of the unit get students writing an in-class essay that really brings it all together.  What I like about the essay prompt that I use is that students formulate their own thesis based on the evidence.  I give them questions to consider like “How did early Americans view religion or God?” Or “How did American Puritans view their role in the battle between good and evil?” These are jumping-off points, but ultimately the focus is their own.  

The first day, they’re figuring out what they want to say in their essays and collecting evidence, and the second day they’re writing the essays—all in class of course.

Since this is a timed essay and students aren’t working on revising it or even really on the writing style much at all, I grade it with a simple rubric and give minimal if any feedback.  

Ending Notes

While this unit is a great stand-alone start to an American literature class, it also obviously pairs well with The Crucible.  I suggest teaching it before the play with an honors or AP class and after the play with a standard class—or any other class that you think will simply revolt when presented with such challenging texts.  I find that the play is so compelling that students are already engaged in the topic and so it’s not quite as hard of a sell.

I kind of wish this topic didn’t feel quite as relevant as it does. Unfortunately, we humans have a habit of falling into the same patterns—but I still believe that studying those patterns can help us recognize them before we repeat them.

You can use this day-by-day outline to build your own creepy-yet-rigorous unit—or check out my complete Salem Witch Trials and Puritan Literature Unit for ready-to-go lessons and materials.

Image Credit: Detail from Portrait of Cornelia, Clara and Johanna Veth Publisher: Rijksmuseum Date: 1885