Hello everyone, and welcome to our lesson today.

My name is Ms. Mullins, and today we're going to be doing some research on a significant historical figure that we are going to be writing our biography about.

In today's lesson, you will be researching and gathering information about Harriet Tubman's life in preparation for writing a biography about her.

Here are some keywords we're going to use.

Chronological order, plantation, extradite, Underground Railroad, Civil War.

Well done.

Chronological order is when a text is written following the order in which events happened.

A plantation is a large farm that specialises in growing one type of crop.

To extradite means to hand over a person accused or convicted of a crime to the state in which the crime was committed.

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of people offering shelter and aid to fugitive slaves.

A civil war is a war between citizens of the same country.

Today we're going to be researching Harriet Tubman in preparation for writing a biography.

In our biography, we are going to be specifically focusing on Harriet Tubman's early life and her activism.

So that's where we're going to be focusing our research.

Let's begin by learning about Harriet Tubman's early life.

The purpose of research is to find out information about a topic.

It is vital that we research the person we are writing about so that we can write factually and accurately about the person.

Remember, the purpose of this text is to inform the reader about Harriet Tubman, so we've got to make sure we understand her life clearly.

In today's lesson, we will be researching Harriet Tubman in preparation for writing a biography about her.

The purpose of research is to what? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that the purpose of research is to learn more about the person and ensure a factual, accurate understanding of the person and their life.

Researching might involve using the internet, but that's not the purpose of research.

Biographies are usually written in chronological order.

For this reason, we will be beginning by researching Harriet Tubman's Early life.

Biographies are usually written in chronological order, true or false? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that this is true.

Now pause the video again while you decide how to justify your answer and consider why we might decide to write our biographies in chronological order.

Well done if you spotted that the correct justification is A, describing a person's life in chronological order helps the reader understand the order in which things happened in a person's life and how one event may have led to another.

When we think about cause and effect, it's really helpful for us to understand the sequence of events in a person's life that may have informed their actions or their decision-making.

And by telling their life story in chronological order, we help the reader to understand that.

What information might we want to find out about Harriet Tubman's early life? Have a moment to have a think.

What would you like to know about her early life? In our research today, we are going to be learning about when and where she was born, where she grew up, her family, what her childhood was like, and what her education was like.

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 in Maryland, USA as Araminta Ross.

During this time in America, slavery was legal.

Both of Harriet's parents were enslaved people, so this meant that Harriet and her eight siblings were also born into slavery.

However, they were often rented out to other slave owners, meaning that the family was very often split up.

Harriet was born as an enslaved person on a plantation.

A plantation is a large farm that specialises in growing one type of crop, such as sugar or cotton or coffee.

A wealthy owner usually owned the plantation, and all the enslaved people who were forced to work there.

We would refer to this person as the slave owner because they literally and legally owned these other human beings who were enslaved to them.

At the age of five, Harriet worked as a house servant.

Later, she worked in the plantation fields.

She never received any formal education or schooling because enslaved people were not entitled to an education.

Which country was Harriet Tubman born in? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that Harriet was born in the United States of America, because this country, at the time in the 1800s, that slavery was prohibited, that means it was legal.

It was allowed by the law.

Here is a picture of the plantation where Harriet Tubman and her family worked as enslaved people.

Harriet had a strong sense of justice, and this is illustrated when at the age of 12, she rushed to protect another enslaved person from being beaten by an overseer.

An overseer was somebody who oversaw and kept an eye on and was in charge of the enslaved people who were working in the fields.

While she went to go and protect this other enslaved person, she was hit on the head with a weight and she suffered extreme headaches and narcolepsy for the rest of her life as a result of this incident.

Narcolepsy is a condition where a person might fall asleep at any given time, and they have no control over that.

So it's a really, really impactful condition for a person to live with for the rest of their life.

What information, if we go back to the information we wanted to find out about Harriet Tubman's early life, let's just review what we've learned.

We've learned where and when she was born.

She was born around the year 1820.

It's not exactly sure whether it was 1820 or 1821 or 1822, but around that time.

She was born in the United States of America in a state called Maryland.

She grew up on a plantation.

She was born to two enslaved parents, and she was one of nine children.

And because both of the parents were enslaved, that meant all of the children were also born as slaves.

Even though the family all lived and worked mainly on the same plantation, they were often rented out to go and work on other plantations or for other slave owners.

So this meant that the family could be split up for long periods at a time.

Throughout her childhood, she was living and working on a plantation as an enslaved person.

At the age of five years old, she was working as a servant in the house, in the main house on the plantation.

And then then a few years later, she was sent out to work outdoors in the plantations fields.

And finally, because Harriet was born into enslavement, along with her siblings, she and her siblings had no formal education.

That means they did not go to school.

They were never taught by teachers because they were not entitled to an education.

Now it is time for you to pause the video as you complete your task.

You need to fill in the gaps to complete the paragraph describing Harriet Tubman's early life.

Pause the video while you do that.

Well done if you have finished your task.

Let's review our answers.

Let's read it together.

Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 in Maryland, USA, or the United States of America, or you might have also just written America.

She was born into enslavement on a plantation.

This is where she lived and was forced to work.

Harriet's mom, dad, and eight siblings were all kept as slaves and were often rented out to other slave owners, meaning the family was often split up.

At the age of five, Harriet worked as a house servant and was later sent to work in the plantation's fields.

When she was 12 years old, Harriet protected another enslaved person from being attacked by an overseer.

She was hit on the head and suffered from headaches and narcolepsy for the rest of her life as a result.

Well done everyone.

There is a huge amount of information there that we have learned about Harriet Tubman's early life, and lots of it is extremely upsetting to learn about.

So well done for completing your task.

Now we're going to learn a little bit more about Harriet Tubman's activism.

In 1840, so Harriet would've been roughly 20 years old, Harriet's father was set free from slavery.

Harriet's mother, Harriet, and her siblings should also have been set free, as this had been in their owner's last will when they died.

However, their new slave owner refused to honour this and kept them in enslavement.

Let's just take a moment to think about the injustice of that.

So their previous slave owner had wanted them to be set free and had written that into their will when they died.

That's a legal document that should have been honoured.

However, the new person who owned Harriet and her brothers and sisters and her mother refused to allow them to be set free.

In 1844, Harriet learned that her two brothers, Ben and Henry, were due to be sold to another slave owner.

So not just rented out and sent for a short period of time, but actually sold so she would never see them again.

This motivated Harriet and Ben and Henry to make a plan to escape.

In 1849, so let's just think about that time period.

In 1844, they decided that they were going to make a bid for freedom, but it wasn't for another five years that they did this.

So in 1849, Harriet, Ben and Henry escaped the plantation.

But after a couple of weeks, the two brothers changed their minds and they decided to go back.

Harriet continued alone, and with the help of the Underground Railroad, she escaped north to freedom.

Now, before we learn about the Underground Railroad, let's just think about the fact that her two brothers hadn't been caught, but they decided to go back to the plantation.

That's because at this time, it was incredibly dangerous for an enslaved person to escape.

If they had been caught, they would have been severely punished.

So lots of people may have felt that actually they were not willing to take the risk to run away.

This is how powerful the structures of slavery were when Harriet was a young person.

The Underground Railroad was a secret network of African American and white people offering shelter and help to fugitive enslaved people.

Fugitive enslaved people were those escaping enslavement, fleeing from the Southern states.

Conductors were people who help guide fugitive slaves across different hiding places or stations.

These stations included private homes, churches, and schoolhouses.

The people operating these hiding places, or stations, were called stationmasters.

It's really important that we understand the Underground Railroad was not a physical railway track or railroad that was underground.

This is a metaphor.

This name is a metaphor, okay? So the Underground Railroad was a group of people, both African American, black people, and white people who wanted to try and help people who were enslaved to escape to freedom.

So at this point in America, the Southern states, so America is divided up into lots of different states with their own local governments, 'cause it's such a huge country.

And at this time, states in the South of America were allowing, they allowed slavery to happen.

It was legal.

However, in the Northern states, slavery was not legal.

So the Underground Railroad enabled fugitive, that means runaway, slaves to escape and travel north up to where they could be safe and be free from enslavement.

Conductors were the people who helped them move from place to place.

And these hiding places might have been churches or people's homes or schoolhouses, and they were called stations.

But remember, they're not actually train stations.

This was just a metaphorical name for them.

And the people who operate at these hiding places or stations were called stationmasters.

Fugitive Slave Acts were laws used to allow governments to capture fugitive enslaved people and send them back to their owners as well as punish anyone who had helped them.

So, this is again, highlighting my point about how dangerous it was for an enslaved person to flee, and also how dangerous it was for anyone else to help them because it was written in the law using these Fugitive Slave Acts that anyone who was trying to escape could be caught, punished, and sent back to their slave owner, where they would undoubtedly be severely punished.

And also anyone who helped them could also be punished through the law.

Slavery was legal in the USA Southern states, but Northern states wanted to block the spread of slavery.

This is why fugitive slaves fled to Northern states and Canada to avoid being captured and extradited back to their owners.

So that idea of being sent back to their slave owners, we could use the word extradited to explain that.

Pause the video now while you match the terms to their definitions.

Well done if you spotted that the Underground Railroad was a secret network of people offering shelter and help to fugitive slaves.

Conductors helped guide fugitive slaves across different hiding places.

Stations were hiding places including private homes, schoolhouses and churches.

Stationmasters were people operating these hiding places.

And Fugitive Slave Acts were laws that allowed governments to capture fugitive slaves and extradite them to their owners.

Harriet travelled north to Pennsylvania.

This was a northern state that was 90 miles north of Maryland, where she'd escaped the plantation.

And really importantly, it had no slavery.

So slavery was illegal in Pennsylvania with the help of the Underground Railroad.

So people in that network helped her travel up to Pennsylvania to freedom.

Less than a year after reaching freedom, Harriet returned to the plantation as a conductor herself, and she led her family to freedom.

So remember, a conductor for the Underground Railroad was a person who helped the fugitive slaves move from hiding place to hiding place, or among the stations up north to get to freedom.

Over the following years, she helped many other people escape to the Northern states.

Eventually, tensions between Northern and Southern states escalated.

That means it got more and more pronounced and bigger and bigger, and this led to a civil war in America.

Remember, a civil war is when the citizens of the same country are at war with each other.

During this time, Harriet worked with the Northern free States.

So these were the states where slavery was illegal, and she fought to abolish slavery alongside Abraham Lincoln's Union Army.

She worked throughout that time as lots of roles, but some of them included working as a nurse, a scout.

That means she went and recruited other people to help Abraham and work in Abraham Lincoln's Union Army, a cook, and a spy gathering intelligence.

She was the first African-American woman to serve in the US military.

After Lincoln's Union Army won the Civil War, slavery was abolished in 1865.

That means it was removed, it was got rid of, it was no longer legal anywhere in America.

So in the Northern states and the Southern states now, slavery was made illegal.

Select the jobs Harriet did when supporting the Northern states during the Civil War.

Pause the video while you do that.

Harriet worked as a nurse, a spy, and a cook.

She also did other roles as well.

Now it's time for your task.

Order the events in Harriet Tubman's life on the timeline.

The first one has been done for you.

So in 1820, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery.

Pause the video now while you complete the task.

Well done everyone.

So, in 1820, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery.

In 1849, she ran away from the plantation.

In 1851, she begins working for the Underground Railroad.

In 1857, she helps her family escape slavery.

In 1861, she helps northern troops in the Civil War.

In 1865, the Civil War ends and slavery is abolished.

And in 1913, Harriet Tubman dies at the age of 92.

I'm so impressed with your focus and your learning throughout our lesson today.

We've taken on a huge amount of information and subject specific vocabulary in this lesson.

Well done, I'm so impressed.

Okay, everyone.

And that now brings us on to the end of our lesson today where we have been researching Harriet Tubman in preparation for writing a biography.

Research is a vital element of preparing to write a biography.

Writers must understand the person's life so that they can write accurately and cohesively.

Harriet Tubman was born an enslaved person in Maryland, USA, but she eventually escaped to freedom in Pennsylvania.

She became a conductor on the Underground Railroad and helped many others escape slavery.

She became the first African American woman to work in the US military.

After the Civil War in America ended, slavery was abolished in 1865.

Now that we've conducted such dense research on Harriet Tubman's life, we are now ready to start thinking about planning and writing our biography about her.

I'm looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Well done.