Last updated: October 12, 2021
Lesson Plan
Border Conflict 7th & 8th Grade
- Grade Level:
- Middle School: Sixth Grade through Eighth Grade
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 30 Minutes
- State Standards:
- Missouri: #5 Theme 1-B Using an American history lens, examine the origins and impact of social structures and stratification on societies and relationships between peoples.
Kansas: Ideas - Popular sovereignty, slavery and abolition, underground railroad - Additional Standards:
- transportation/communication, state constitutions, Free State Movement.
Oklahoma: 8.6.4 Examine the increased tension between Southern sectionalist and Northern nationalist perspectives. 8.10.4 Exmaine impact of Ks-Nb. Act of popular sovereignty terr. - Thinking Skills:
- Remembering: Recalling or recognizing information ideas, and principles. Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words. Applying: Apply an abstract idea in a concrete situation to solve a problem or relate it to a prior experience. Analyzing: Break down a concept or idea into parts and show the relationships among the parts. Creating: Bring together parts (elements, compounds) of knowledge to form a whole and build relationships for NEW situations. Evaluating: Make informed judgements about the value of ideas or materials. Use standards and criteria to support opinions and views.
Essential Question
How does working toward a singular goal of expansion bleed into unintended consequences.
Objective
Students will realize that in some situations one issue can bring up multiple unintended problems.
Student Friendly Objective: I will realize that a decision can lead to other problems I had not considered.
Background
Kansas-Nebraska Act - Allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. The long-standing compromise would have to be repealed.
Compromise of 1820 - This so-called Missouri Compromise drew a line from east to west along the 36th parallel, dividing the nation into competing halves - half free, half slave. The House passed the compromise bill on March 2, 1820.
Compromise of 1850 - The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery and territorial expansion. ...As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished.
Preparation
Vocabulary Review
Paper and pencil for each student
Materials
Lesson Hook/Preview
Have students search and discuss songs that are about being hurt in some way and trying to fix, but realizing that you can't. Examples: Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood"
Procedure
Show Kansas-Nebraska Act/Popular Sovereignty - Road to Civil War 4:34.
Discuss
Show Popular Sovereignty leads to Bleeding Kansas - You Tube 1:34
Discuss
Show Fort Scott National Historic Site video - Bleeding Kansas 4:18
Discuss
Have students choose a character from Road to the Civil War video (4:34) anonymously. Then write a letter to their Congressmen on how they believe the issue of slavery should be dealt with on moral grounds. This letter should also be anonymous.
After turning these letters in to the teacher, post them around the room.
Students then travel around the room at random with pencil and paper, rating the letters on their persuasiveness. Students should note what persuaded them and why. Did it appeal to emotion or reason or other reasons?
Follow up Discussion: Based on what appealed to you, what is your perception of what moves or persuades people on controversial issues?
Vocabulary
Popular Sovereignty - also called Squatter Sovereignty, in U.S. history, a controversial political doctrine according to which the people of federal territories should decide for themselves whether their territories would enter the Union as free or slave states.
Transcontinental Railroad - A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was a project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah. The Central Pacific laborers were predominantly Chinese, and the Union Pacific laborers predominantly Irish. Both groups worked under harsh conditions.
Manifest Destiny - in U.S. history, the supposed inevitability of the continued territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond.
Bleeding Kansas - small civil war in the United States, fought between proslavery and antislavery advocates for control of the new territory of Kansas under the doctrine of popular sovereignty.
Supports for Struggling Learners
Have students create a cartoon that shows how those in the U.S. were struggling with the issue and the options that people were given to deal with the issue of slavery, then have them add how this issue should have been detail with to avoid such a BLOODY response.
Enrichment Activities
Investigate ways in which media try to persuade people. Ask students to evaluate propaganda that was circulating during the time of Bleeding Kansas. Have them determine what the message is, why it was being shared, and how people likely responded to it then and how people would likely respond to it today.