Document-Based Lesson Plan: Summer Institute I
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Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

§ Look for the symbol! They denote the places where we need you to provide information about your lesson. (As you can see, we've also provided plenty of examples for you to consider.)

§ NAME:

§ SCHOOL:

§ PARTNERS:

§ DOCUMENT FROM THE MISSISSIPPI STATE ARCHIVES USED IN THIS LESSON: (PLEASE GIVE A FULL CITATION!!)

§        GRADE LEVEL/LEVELS FOR WHICH LESSON COULD BE USED:

§          SUBJECT/SUBJECTS FOR WHICH LESSON COULD BE USED:

§         MISSISSIPPI CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK COMPETENCY/COMPETENCIES:

(You can find the complete list at: http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/acad/id/curriculum/ss/sstable.htm )

YOUR ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR THIS LESSON:

§         How does historical evidence explain......?

SOME POSSIBLE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS :

How does historical evidence explain:

 •           why the westward expansion of the United States created increasing tension between slave and free states, and how a series of compromises served to temporarily preserve the Union?

•           how the abolitionist movement contributed to widening divisions between North and South?

•           why and how events such as the Dred Scott Decision, the raid on Harper's Ferry, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin further exacerbated the tensions between North and South?

•           why the election of Abraham Lincoln set into motion a chain of events that resulted in the secession of Southern states and the attack on Fort Sumter?

•           how Lincoln's war to preserve the Union evolved into a war to end slavery?

•           why the South enjoyed military successes at the beginning of the war and why the North was eventually able to triumph?

•           the short- and long-term effects of the war on both soldiers and the civilian population of the North and South?

•           the social, political, and economic effects of emancipation?

•           the significance of Abraham Lincoln in American history?

•           why and how Congress became increasingly "radical" in its Reconstruction policies, and how these policies affected the former Confederate states?

•           how and why the federal government abandoned Reconstruction, and how this decision affected both black and white Southerners?

HISTORICAL CONTENT OF YOUR LESSON

§  People:
§  Events:
§  Places:
§  Key terms, dates, etc.:

HISTORICAL CONCEPTS/ THEMES FOR THIS LESSON:

Include at least one theme or concept for each lesson plan.

§ Some examples:

• values, beliefs, political ideas, and institutions;
• conflict and cooperation;
• civilization, cultural diffusion, and interaction;
• human interaction with the environment
• comparative history of major developments in the past;
• patterns of social and political interaction.

(You may find Vital Unifying Themes and Narratives of Human Experience” in the National History Education's Building a History Curriculum to be helpful or you may wish to come up with themes and concepts of your own!)

HISTORICAL SKILLS/PROCESSES TO BE TAUGHT OR REINFORCED IN THIS LESSON:

Focus on one or more historical skills in each lesson plan.

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Some examples:

•       finding and analyzing primary sources;
•       detecting bias;
•       interpreting historical maps;
•       developing empathy for people in the past;
•       relating past to present;
•       understanding chronology;
•       explaining cause and effect;
•       appreciating the importance of the irrational and accidental in history and human affairs;
•       understanding the relationship between geography and history;
•       framing useful questions about the past;
•       analyzing visual sources such as photographs and artwork;
•       evaluating primary sources from Internet sources. (See History's Habits of Mind for more ideas.)

INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES

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TEACHER RESOURCES USED IN THE LESSON

WEB SITES USED FOR THIS LESSON: (OPTIONAL)

(Please provide both the title and the address of any sites not listed above, plus any tips about the site that you'd like to share with us!)

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OTHER WEB SITES THAT MIGHT PROVE USEFUL:

These sites provide documents, lesson plans, time lines, and/or handouts:

Our Documents

Go to Teacher's Toolbox and go to “Integrating Our Documents into the Classroom” This site also provides a teacher source book as well as information about National History Day in the classroom.

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/

The Library of Congress Learning Page

Check out “Using Primary Sources in the Classroom.” Also, there are several excellent lesson plans on the Civil War and Reconstruction for various grade levels, including “The Civil War Through a Child’s Eyes.”

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/index.html

National History Day

Click on “Educators” and then “Links” for museums, archives, universities, and countless other sources for primary sources. You can also download the Contest Guide (the rule book with the judges’ scoring rubric,) a Web cast of the June 2003 awards ceremony, tips for using History Day in the classroom, and more! You will find “A Research Roadmap” especially useful in helping your kids get started with History Day.

http://nationalhistoryday.org

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Digital Classroom

Go to Teaching with Documents and Teaching with Documents Lesson Plans, which include “The Amistad Case,” “Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions, ” and other excellent plans on slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

You will also find “Building a School Archives,” “History in the Raw,”and the “Document Analysis Worksheet” to be useful, especially in preparing students for History Day research.

http://www.archives.gov/

Eyewitness Home Page

First-hand accounts include “The Battle of Gettysburg,” “Carnage at Antietam,” “Lincoln Enters Richmond, 1865,” “Battlefield Tragedy, 1862,” “The Death of John Wilkes Booth,” “Lee’s Retreat from Gettysburg, 1863,” “Aboard a Slave Ship, 1829,” and “The Trial of Andrew Johnson, 1868.”

http://www.ibiscom.com/mefrm.htm

Gilder Lehrman History Online

A very nice site! Especially recommended sections are “Hollywood’s America: Slavery in American Film,” “Annotated Documents: African American Voices,” “Interactive Timelines,” and “Great Debates” (includes debates on the origins of American slavery, whether slavery was the cause of American economic growth, and whether Andrew Johnson should have been impeached.)

Teacher created classroom-tested lesson plans and handouts include “Women in the Civil War.”

http://www.gliah.uh.edu/historyonline

North American Slave Narratives: Collection of Electronic Texts

A part of the Documenting the American South Web site, this is an extensive collection of memoirs and other nineteenth century publications concerning slavery.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/texts.html

The History Place Presents Abraham Lincoln

This site has a very detailed timeline of Lincoln’s life and career, photos, and documents, including Lincoln’s last speech and letters to Generals Hooker, Meade, and Grant.

http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/index.html

EDSITEment

http://www.edsitement.neh.gov/

Go to History/Social Studies for plans such as “Evaluating Eyewitness Reports,” “More Amazing Americans: A Web Quest,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face: Portraits,” “Attitudes Towards Emancipation,” “Eve of the Civil War: Factory vs. Plantation,” “Families in Bondage,” “Spirituals,” “Images at War,” “Lincoln Goes to War,” “Walt Whitmans’s Notebooks and Poetry: The Sweep of the Universe,” “What Portraits Reveal,” “We Must Not Be Enemies: Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address,” “The Red Badge of Courage: A New Kind of Courage,” “African-American Communities in the North Before the Civil War,” “After the American Revolution: Free African-Americans,” and “Who Was Cinque?”

BOOKS, PERIODICALS, ARTICLES, ETC. USED FOR TEACHER'S BACKGROUND READING (PLEASE PROVIDE TITLE AND AUTHOR.) 

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SUGGESTED BOOKS, PERIODICALS, ARTICLES, ETC. FOR TEACHER'S BACKGROUND READING:

•           Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long
•           Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy and The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union
•           John Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
•           John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans
•           Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
•           Civil War Preservation Trust, Civil War Sites: The Official Guide to Battlefields, Monuments, and More
•           Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves
•           James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
•           Our Documents: A National Initiative on American History, Civics, and Service (Teacher Sourcebook)
•           C. Vann Woodward, Mary Chesnutt's Civil War
•           Bruce Catton, The Terrible Swift Sword, Coming Fury, and Never Sound Retreat
•           Shelby Foote, Shiloh (Also available as a beautifully read audiobook.)
•           David Herbert Donald, Lincoln
•           Albert B. Hart, The Reconstruction Era: Eyewitness Accounts

MEDIA/TECHNOLOGY USED FOR THIS LESSON (Optional):

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(We suggest Ken Burns' video series The Civil War; the excellent soundtrack is also available on cassette or CD. The American Experience: Reconstruction will air in 2003 on PBS; check your local listings.)

ORAL HISTORY RESOURCES:
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HISTORIC PLACES:
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(This could include virtual field trips on the Internet.)

OTHER:
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STUDENT RESOURCES:

Some suggested Web sites for students:

The Library of Congress Learning Page
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/index.html

Africans in America
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/

National History Day
http://nationalhistoryday.org

Our Documents
www.ourdocuments.gov

The History Place Presents Abraham Lincoln 
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/index.html

WEB SITES/TECHNOLOGY USED BY STUDENTS FOR THIS LESSON (OPTIONAL)
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BOOKS/PERIODICALS FOR CLASSROOM READING/ENRICHMENT (OPTIONAL)
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Some suggestions:

•           Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in His Own Words
•           Joy Hakim, Liberty for All
•           Virginia Hamilton, Many Thousands Gone: African-Americans from Slavery to Freedom
•           Pat and Patricia McKissak, A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, A Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, 1859
•           Joy Hakim, War, Terrible War
•           Kay Moore, If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War
•           Irene Hunt, Across Five Aprils
•           Stephen Crane, Red Badge of Courage
•           Jim Murphy, The Boys' War: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk About the Civil War
•           James McPherson, Fields of Fury: The American Civil War
•           Joy Hakim, Reconstruction and Reform
•           Zak Mettger, Reconstruction: American After the Civil War (Young Readers'History of the Civil War)

OTHER (OPTIONAL)
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