USA Stage 6 Comp Letter From The Dust Bowl - Comprehension Pack.pdf

STAGE 6 Unit focus: USA Text focus: Letter Letter From The Dust Bowl July 12th, 1936 Kansas. Dear Alice, Thank you, dear friend, for your most recent letter. It is so heartening to hear news from a world beyond this one and to receive your good wishes as we continue to battle through these most chal...

STAGE 6 Unit focus: USA Text focus: Letter Letter From The Dust Bowl July 12th, 1936 Kansas. Dear Alice, Thank you, dear friend, for your most recent letter. It is so heartening to hear news from a world beyond this one and to receive your good wishes as we continue to battle through these most challenging times. It is especially welcome as another of my friends and neighbours left last week, giving up on their farm and heading west in the hope for work. I cannot judge their decision – after all their children were starving and there is no sign of the situation improving – and yet, I feel it keenly. Each one who leaves makes me question my own stubborn determination to endure this – to stay and protect the farm in spite of everything. My resolve is being tested and yet, we hear word from California that work is hard to come by there too and we, whose only wish was to help feed a nation and build a life for ourselves here on the prairies, are now looked upon as the shame of a nation. So we stay – for now – and instead must walk past the abandoned homes of those who have gone – each one a reminder of a family who came here, like us, full of hope and optimism for the future only to have it dashed. It’s hard to recognise that those fertile, grassy lands on which we built our homes as the same as the dust-choked wasteland that I can see from my window now, though I maintain some hope that there is a way back. I am writing this by the window more out of habit than anything else since nowadays there is little light penetrating through. The dust cloud makes day seem like night and casts an air of gloom over everything, including our moods. We try to keep busy and cultivate high spirits though I cannot pretend that we always succeed. We must tie scarves around our faces to go outside now though in truth, the dust still clogs our lungs and makes it hard to breathe sometimes. It scratches at our faces and sticks to our skin so that we feel rubbed raw. Not content with that, it gets into our food too so that every mouthful has a fair portion of grit in it – still at least it fills Rea e um http://www.literacyshedplus.com C u r r ic ul Th all resources ©2023 Literacy Shed A ding ro und the stomach when food is scarce! Though we try to seal our windows with oiled cloth as best we can, the dust seeps inside even so and a layer of dust covers everything! I long to feel clean and I work hard to keep some semblance of order and cleanliness in the home, but it does feel like I am fighting a losing battle. We will have no harvest this year, as we have not for several years. Nothing grows and each gust of wind seems to be stripping yet more of the land away – layer by layer, day after day, the soil which we might have hoped to plough and plant turns to dust and disappears into the wind and away. Without the grasses, there is nothing to keep it from departing, just like my neighbours. Oh Alice, I have watched a green and verdant land become an arid desert and I feel like we are being punished for our folly, punished for wanting more from the earth than it was willing to give. Please pray for us and pray most of all for rain. Your dear friend, Elizabeth VOCABULARY FOCUS 1. What does ‘keenly’ mean in this context? 2. What word could replace ‘resolve’? 3. Find and copy a word in the 2nd paragraph which is closest in meaning to ‘appearance’. 4. What does verdant mean? 5. Find and copy a word that means stupidity. R R E S S VIPERS QUESTIONS Where are friends and neighbours fleeing to? What two ways does Elizabeth mention for protecting herself from the dust? The drought was in part caused by over-farming the land. Find and copy a sentence where Elizabeth alludes to this. Summarise the main challenges for Elizabeth. Why has Elizabeth decided to stay in Kansas? all resources ©2023 Literacy Shed http://www.literacyshedplus.com