Lesson Plan

War on the Home Front: Civil War Reading Passage with Graphic Organizer

Grade Level:
Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade
Subject:
Social Studies
Lesson Duration:
90 Minutes
State Standards:
English: 4.1, 4.2, 5.1,5.6
History: VS.7
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. Analyzing: Break down a concept or idea into parts and show the relationships among the parts.

Essential Question

How did the American Civil War and its outcomes change the lives of people, both free and enslaved, on the Burroughs Plantation from 1850-1865?

Objective

To develop the students understanding of the following –

• Definition of slavery
• What life was like on a piedmont Virginia, slaveholding tobacco farm
• The primary reason why the Civil War was fought
• How the war affected the enslaved and the slaveowners
• Booker T. Washington’s memory of the moment of emancipation
• What happened following emancipation for Freedmen and former slave owners

Background

Students will become familiar with the main ideas and concepts of the Civil War

Preparation

Pencil, Graphic Organizer, Civil War Essay

Materials

Curriculum-based Education Program for Grades 4-6

Download War on the Home Front

Lesson Hook/Preview

Students will use the graphic organizer to start essay with main idea and detail

Procedure

Procedures:                                     

  1. The students will read the Civil War essay or the teacher will read it aloud to students.                                                                       
  2. The students will discuss the main ideas and concepts of the Civil War.                                                                       
  3. The students will complete the graphic organizer.                                                                       

Vocabulary

Procedure: Use the following list to familiarize students with terms that will be used on their trip.                                

  1. plantation: a large farm where a cash crop is planted and grown to sell                                                             
  2. "big house": the house where the owners of the plantation lived                                                             
  3. emancipation: freedom, especially of the slaves in the United States                                                             
  4. slavery: the owning or keeping of slaves as a practice or institution; slaveholding                                                             
  5. cash crop: plants that are grown to sell for a profit                                                             
  6. grapevine telegraph: an oral form of communication in slave culture in which news spread rapidly among slaves from plantation to plantation                                                             
  7. agrarian: relating to the land; relating to the cultivation or ownership of land                                                             
  8. property: something that is owned by someone                                                             
  9. casualty: a soldier who is lost during active service, especially through being killed, wounded, or captured                                                             
  10. indentured servitude: a contract to work for a person for a certain number of years, usually to pay for passage to the New World; at the end of the contract these servants are free                                                     
  11. industrial: having to do with industries; relating to factories or the work, products, or people within                                                             
  12. insurrection: a rising up against established authority; rebellion; revolt                                                             
  13. territory: a part of the United States having its own legislature but without the status of a State and under the administration of an appointed governor                                                             
  14. secession: the withdrawal of 11 states from the United States of America in 1860 and 1861; being about the Confederate States of America and the American Civil War
Suggested Activities and Strategies                                                                                
  1. Flash cards                                                             
  2. Jeopardy                                                             
  3. Who Wants to be A Millionaire                                       
  4. Paragraph Writing
  5. Web Quest                                                             
Key terms  
  1. Slaveholder: an owner of another human being who is used as personal property                                                             
  2. Abolitionist: a person who works toward ending slavery in the United States                                                             
  3. John Rolf: English colonist who introduced tobacco to the settlers of Jamestown                                                             
  4. Nat Turner: American leader of a slave rebellion in Southampton, Virginia                                                             
  5. Abraham Lincoln: the sixteenth President of the United States; also President during the American Civil War who issued the Emancipation Proclamation                                                             
  6. John Brown: American abolitionist leader who seized Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859                                                             
  7. Alexander Stevens: Vice President of the Confederate States of America                                                             
  8. American Civil War (1861 – 1865): the war fought between the Union and the Confederacy                                                             
  9. Emancipation Proclamation: the document issued by President Lincoln, which became official on January 1, 1863, that was supposed to free the slaves in the Confederate states                                                             
  10. Underground Railroad: an organized system of “conductors” and safe houses that helped runaway slaves escape to the North                                                             
  11. 13th Amendment: the amendment to the Constitution in which slavery is ended                                                             
  12. Union: the side of the United States during the Civil War; the North                                                             
  13. Confederate: the side of the South during the Civil War; Rebels

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Tags: civil war race slavery

Last updated: January 12, 2022