Unit Summary

1. Unit Summary • Students conduct research that leads to an understanding of the southern and Northern man and their perspective regarding expansion of slavery and decision to go fight the Civil War. • Students utilize written texts, websites, handouts, audio clips, videos they find on the internet to gain information for their projects. • They work in teams to create an illustrative monologue for one of the characters of the period and show their perspective regarding the war. The choices the students can choose from are: working-class Northerner, Working-class Southerner, Wealthy Northerner, Wealthy Southerner, Slave, Abolitionist, Politician, Northern Woman, Southern Woman. For each student in the group they will make an equal number of perspective blabbers each one different form other members of the group. The responsibility to complete each perspective is of the group and not individual. • They publish their monologues via a “talking picture” (created at Blabberize.com), and they discuss each other’s work on a class blog. • Finally, students’ knowledge of perspectives regarding the issues culminating into the Civil War are understood from the perspective of the people of the time be they from the North South etc.

2. CFQs • Essential Questions • Why do people go to War? • Why do people fight with their own family, friends, communities? • What does the term Civil War mean?

3. CFQs • Unit Questions • Why did the South decide to go to war with the North? • Why did the North engage in War with the South? • What social, political, and economic factors affected peoples strong feelings about fighting other Americans?

4. CFQs • Content Questions BLOG QUESTIONS throughout the week For the project the students should be able to answer the following questions • How did the expansion west affect feelings regarding the expansion of slavery give an example? • How did the economic position of people in the North and the South affect their perspective regarding issues leading to the Civil War? • How did women and men view these issues differently? • How were the perspectivesof the Wealthy and the Poor different? • What specific concerns do each character in the time period have concerning the issues leading up to the Civil War? • How has the past affected the direction of each region regarding the issues leading up to the Civil War? • How has current investment of each region affected the concern over issues leading up to the beginning of the Civil War?

5. Vision for the Unit • By creating this unit, I hope to: • Help students explore the connections between the reasons for war and the actions for war. What drives us to do what we do. How do humans react when their livelihood is threatened or they feel they have lost their political representation • Use media (internet) with which my students are already familiar to engage them in learning • During this unit, I want my students to: • Learn about the final decision to go to war with the North and why the North engaged in the War because of politics, economics, and regional decisions. • Use technology to communicate with different audiences • Engage with each other in discussions about both perspectives on the Civil War throughout class and racial differences.

6. Project Approaches • As my students work on this project, they • Connect with the thinking of people during this period that ultimately drove them to decide to go to war • Collaborate with peers • Create a product that shows what they’ve learned • Share their learning with a real audience and uses correct methods of communication for that audience

7. 21st Century Learning • Students will develop higher-order and 21st century skills in this unit as they • Use the Essential and Unit Questions to guide their analysis of perspectives and feeling about the expansion of slavery and other issues leading up to the start of the civil war • Communicate their ideas to a community audience using online media • Reflect on their reading, writing, research, and thinking strategies, and modify and adapt them as necessary to meet requirements and expectations • Use project assessments to self-assess their work and give feedback to their peers using both traditional and technological means

8. Gauging Student Needs & Learning • Use Assessments & CFQs to learn • Students’ background knowledge of their understanding of the build up to the Civil War and what caused the conflict to begin. • Students’ ideas about characteristics of humans living during the period of Pre-Civil War America and how they would react to the big issues of the time period. • Assess 21st Century skills • Ability to see relationships in decision making based on what is necessary to live and looking out for ones best interests and how this is the same today because we are all still humans making decisions. • Ability to use a variety of mediums, from traditional to technological, to communicate what they have learned to peers

9. Gauging Student Needs & Learning • I can use information from assessments to • Guide students to learning that addresses ingoing misperceptions or information needs • Guide students to contemplate contemporary connections that help them better understand underlying archetypes • Students can use information from these assessments to • Guide their own learning in terms of depth and direction • Establish a knowledge base for future units • Hone their communication skills for authentic audiences

10. Requests for Feedback • Need tools for assessing team/group work that fairly assesses the work (or lack thereof) of individual members