Last updated: October 12, 2021
Lesson Plan
Border Conflict 5th & 6th grade
- Grade Level:
- Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 30 Minutes
- State Standards:
- Missouri: Concept E - Character traits and civic attitudes of significant individuals; #2Knowledge - Concept B - Dispute resolution
Kansas: KCCRS RI.5.6 Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences - Additional Standards:
- in the point of view they represent.
Oklahoma: 8.6.4 Examine the increased tension between Southern sectionalist and Northern nationalist perspectives. - 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 see how one decision can lead to multiple others that have never been considered.
Background
Kansas-Nebraska Act, review components: It became law on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as "Bleeding Kansas," as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote.
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 - 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
Print out map of U.S. with path of transcontinental railroad
Paper towel or toilet paper cardboard rolls, enough for each student to be able to look through separately.
Review of Kansas-Nebraska Act, review components. This 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.
Materials
Lesson Hook/Preview
Have you ever been playing a game on your phone or tablet and forgot the time? You look up and you have missed dinner or lunch or an appointment to meet a friend?
Procedure
Show on Smartboard if availablePopular Sovereignty Leads to Bleeding Kansas - You Tube 1:34
Discuss the meaning of Popular Sovereignty.
Show on Smartboard if available Kansas-Nebraska Act/Popular Sovereignty - Road to the Civil War, 4:34
Discuss various actors depicted and what their points of view were.
Show on Smartboard if availableFort Scott National Historic Site video - Bleeding Kansas, 4:18
Activity Map
Discuss outcome of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Distribute maps and cardboard rolls, one each per student.
Direct students to keep their maps flipped to the blank side until you direct to turn over.
Tell students, using their cardboard rolls only, follow the path of the transcontinental railroad across the country, beginning at Chicago, Illinois, following through the grasslands, mountains and state names. (Important to not look at the map as a whole, only through their cardboard rolls and only at the railroad path.
Direct students to again flip maps, blank side facing up.
Direct by 1,2,3 - eyes on me, ask students what they noticed about the track, it's general path, etc.?
Tell students there is an obvious message shown on the map that they have missed. Instruct them to turn maps right side up.
In a class discussion ask students what obvious element of the map did this miss? So as Congress was discussing the transcontinental railroad, was there a disconnect between what Congress thought about slavery as compared to the general population?
Conclusion question: Write about a time when someone thought they were helping you but they actually made the situation worse. Can you compare your situation to that of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Vocabulary
Popular Sovereignty - A doctrine in political theory that government is created by and subject to the will of the people. A pre-Civil War doctrine asserting the right of the people living in a newly organized territory to decide by vote of their territorial legislature whether or not slavery would be permitted there.
Stephen Douglas - (1813 - 1861) Was a U.S. politician, leader of the Democratic Party, and orator who espoused the cause of popular sovereignty in relation to the issue of slavery in the territories before the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Lewis Cass - (1782 - 1866) In an effort to prevent future prohibitive measures against slavery in the West, Democratic Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, offered up the idea of popular sovereignty. In theory, as Cass and his supporters reasoned, in a democratic society free citizens determined the future.
Transcontinental Railroad - A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the 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 were predominantly Irish. Both groups often 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
Students should write/share out loud a time when they tried to fix a problem but it ended making it worse (like a scab) and then compare their personal narrative to the events of Bleeding Kansas. How were they alike? How were they different?
Enrichment Activities
Have students construct a HOW TO GUIDE to STOP THE BLEEDING in a political sense. Students should format that in a cause and effect format. If X happens you should do Y. Students should accompany their writings with illustrative renderings like one would see in a medical facility.