Lesson Description
The focus of this lesson/project is the causes of the Civil War. Using a variety of resources including Internet sites, video and books the students will gain personal insights into some of the causes of the Civil War and the personal backgrounds and motivations of the people who lived during that time. This lesson will be directed towards developing the students’ interpersonal and intra-personal skills through the creative use of technology. It is part of a series of lesson plans on the Civil War designed to address Gardner’s “Seven Intelligences”.
Each student will choose a character from the period. They may choose a historical figure or a generic personality such as a plantation owner, northern factory worker, a slave in the south, a soldier in the Union or Confederate army, a freed slave living in the north , a farmer along the Mason Dixon line, etc. The student will then research their character and using a variety of resources, including their imaginations, develop a persona for that character. The students will then be asked to portray their character in a variety of situations.For more information on Internet Civil War resources click on American Civil War Home Page.
Objectives / Goals
• The students will develop an understanding of the causes of the Civil War from a personal perspective.
• The students will develop their intra-personal skills by generating a persona for character from the Civil War and imagining how this person felt and what motivated their actions. They will demonstrate and give life to their created persona by creating journal entries and writing letters.
• The students will develop their interpersonal skills by portraying their characters in interactions with other students and their characters. The main forum for this interaction will be a chat room where the characters will be able to interact without the identity of the student being revealed and the teacher will ask the characters to address certain broad topics.
• The students will develop writing skills appropriate to assignments in this lesson. (journal entries, letter writing)
• The student will further develop their technological skills by using the Internet for research and participating in a forum based in the Internet. They will also develop their keyboarding and word processing skills as they communicate on the Net and type their letters and journal entries.
Grade Level
10th Grade Students- The students are average to above average in their abilities. They have used computers before for word processing and exploring the Internet. They have some prior knowledge of the Civil War. This lesson comes in the middle of the unit on the Civil War.
Concepts
• Content Areas- Social Studies, American History, Language Arts, Creative Writing, Computer Skills
• Teaching Methods-
Discovery Learning: Students discover facts and explore concepts on their own using a variety of resources with minimal supervision from the teacher.
Cooperative Learning: students develop and demonstrate their ideas through interaction with their peers.
Materials / Equipment
• video player, television, video tape “Gettysburg”
• computers for students to work on
• Internet access, web page or list of URL’s for Civil War educational sites
• access to chat room for the students to use as a forum
Procedures
• Introduction- The class will view the video. Prior to watching the video the teacher will give the students with a number of questions to consider while watching the video. These questions are designed to prime the students for the coming assignment.
- What are the characters’ motivations?
- What external factors are influencing the characters?
- Are the characters suffering from any internal conflicts?
- What factors or events in the past shape the characters’ personalities?
• Research and Character Development-
• The students are given their assignment. They must choose a character they wish to portray/develop for this assignment. This character may be a historical figure or a generic one. To develop their character the students may use knowledge they have already gained during this unit, books, video and Internet resources listed on a Web page designed for this unit. Here’s a list of possible characters: Historical figures, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses Grant, “Stonewall Jackson”, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe or countless others. Generic Characters, a soldier in the union or confederate army, a plantation owner, a slave, a freed slave, a farmer living near the Mason Dixon line, a factory worker in the north, a southerner with out slaves or any other profession.
The teacher may want to divide the class between the North and South in order to get a good mix of opinions.
• Writing activity
The students, based on their research of their characters, are to reflect on how the characters felt and reacted to the War and the issues surrounding it. The students are to use their own feelings and imaginations to bring their characters to life. They are to produce two journal entries and a letter authored by their characters. The journal entries should focus on the characters feelings, goals and motivations but it should also include at least one geographic reference appropriate to the character and at least one reference to some historic event.
• Open Forum
The students are to interact with each other using their characters’ personas in an open forum. This forum will by facilitated by a chat room in which the student can interact anonymously. Over the course of three or four days the students are given 10 minutes each day to participate in the chat room. Each day the teacher begins the session by providing a provocative statement or question. After that the characters may respond to the opening statement or the other characters. Students will be expected to make at least one entry each day.
• Summary
The students will discuss the issues raised in the open forum and relate them to other material covered during this unit. Students will be encouraged to share any insights they have gained into their character and into the causes of the Civil War by answering the following questions.
- What motivated your character?
- What role did he / she plat in the war?
- How did they feel about the war?
- What external factors affected your character’s attitude and actions?
- Did your character have any internal conflicts?
Assessment
• Written
The students will write two journal entries and one letter by their character. These will include within them at least one geographic one historic reference relevant to the character. It should also reflect the characters feelings and opinions about the Civil War and the issues surrounding it.
• Participation
The students must participate in the open forum with a minimum of one entry each day. They will also be expected answer the questions within the summary and share their answers with the class.
Related Activities
• Using the chat room on the Internet, the class could invite another class studying the same material to participate in the open forum.
• At the end of the lesson organize a debate between the North and South with the students defending their characters’ points of view.
• Take a field trip to a Civil War battlefield. Instruct your students to imagine their character and write about the experience.
Site Directory
Body / Kinesthetic & Visual / Spatial Lesson Plan
Musical & Linguistic Lesson Plan
Multiple Intelligences Overview