The class of about twenty to twenty five eighth grade students, that is co-taught by a certified regular education Social Studies teacher and a certified Special Education teacher, will be organized into groups of four to five to research basic biographical information about prominent African Americans and one of the three Constitutional Amendments of the time period. Because the class is a mixture of regular education students and students who have special education IEPs, the instructors will set up the groups with students of varying skills and abilities in each. Because eighth graders connect to factual information better when they can relate to it in a personal way, they will be encouraged to find anecdotal personal information as well as facts about their assigned person’s development as a lawmaker and how each Amendment affects them personally.
Students will be prompted with suggested websites to use. Research will take place in the school’s tech lab since many students do not have Internet access at home. Teachers will work with each group at specific times to be sure that they are finding the necessary facts about each subject. The research sessions will be interspersed with lessons on chronological events of Reconstruction presented by teachers. At the culmination of the research each group will present their information to the class. Because the school is an Arts Magnet school the rubric for presenting information on the timeline will include an artistic component such as visual art, music or theater.
The lessons on the chronology of Reconstruction will be based on the information in the textbook currently being used in the classroom; primary sources such as personal letters and journals, law documents, propaganda and advertisements; art and literature of the time period; and teacher made materials. Students will be taught the events of Reconstruction in a cause and effect direct instruction model with oral participation based on student research, and exposure to primary sources, art and literature. Through class participation and written assignments students will be able to describe obstructions, attitudes and perceptions that prevented the success of Reconstruction.
Each student will choose several different “writers” for their journal entries. Teachers will provide them with specific choices for these actors depending on the situation which they will be responding to. These characters could include an actual person such as President Andrew Johnson or Frederick Douglass; or a fictitious person based on their historical situation such as: a freed slave, a southern widow living on a plantation who formerly owned slaves, a northern merchant or a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Students will compose journal entries from two different actors for each journal writing assignment. Most entries will be assigned daily as homework and should be a reflection of the lesson presented in class that day.
Sample Journal Writing Lessons
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Objective: Students will demonstrate knowledge of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13
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Amendment to the United States Constitution. Students will be assigned a journal entry written in response to the news of the Emancipation Proclamation and a journal entry written in response to the news of the 13
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Amendment as seen through the eyes of one of the following characters: a newly freed plantation worker, a plantation owner, a member of Congress who voted against these changes, or a northern abolitionist. Through this exercise students should express their knowledge of what these acts entailed as well as their “writers’” hopes or fears for the future based on these changes.
Objective: After reading section 4 of
: An Act to Regulate the Relation of Master and Apprentice, as Relates to Freedmen, Free Negroes, and Mulattoes
from the Mississippi Black codes of 1865, (see Appendix A)students will demonstrate knowledge of these laws and reflect upon how they impacted citizens of that state through journal writing as one of the following actors: A former slave, a white landowner and former slave owner, a Union soldier sent to keep order, or a widow of a confederate soldier.
Objective: Students will demonstrate knowledge of a riot that took place on July 30
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1866 in New Orleans during the time of Martial Law after the Civil War by writing a journal entry as it may have been written by one of the following people: President Andrew Johnson, General Philip Sheridan (The Union General who witnessed the riots), the Governor of Louisiana (James Madison Wells, a Unionist Democrat), a member of the angry white mob, a white person who was standing along side the blacks who were being attacked, or a black person who was being attacked by the mob.
Objective: Students will evaluate the necessity of Northern troops occupying Southern states through the eyes of those involved. They will choose from the following actors: President Johnson, General Robert E. Lee, a former confederate soldier who is now attending West Point Academy, an unemployed, amputee, former confederate soldier, a southern women who runs a dress shop in Virginia or a formerly enslaved person (man or woman) who is trying to start a grocery business in a busy town in Tennessee. Their writing should reflect the tensions between different groups of people involved as well as the personal opinions and feelings of their “writers.”
Objective: Students will demonstrate an understanding of different viewpoints on the education of former slaves by writing a journal entry in reaction to the opening of an inclusive (for blacks and whites) public school in their town or city. As a group, the students will read aloud the following quote from abolitionist Charlotte Forten:
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A truly wintry day. I have not had half as many scholars as usual. It was
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too cold for my "babies" to venture out. But altogether we had nearly a
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hundred. They were unusually bright today, and sang with the greatest
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spirit...After school the children went into a little cabin near, where they
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had kindled a fire, and had a grand "shout."(3)
Students will choose “writers” from the following people: a Northern missionary traveling to the South to teach, a former slave owner who has hired several of his former slaves to work on his farm, a formerly enslaved person, a Northern merchant who sells school books, a poor white Southern teenager who never learned to read. Entries should reflect the impact of the opportunity to educate or the opportunity to receive an education on the people involved. This lesson can be assigned in two parts. Part one as the initial
reaction to the school opening and part two as the reflection on the changes brought to the area.
Objective: Students will describe the impact of the removal of Union troops from the south in 1877. This assignment is in two parts. Part one is the initial reaction of their “writers” to the removal of Martial Law. Part two will describe the impact on their “writers’” life several months later. Students may choose any “writers” offered in previous assignments that they have not used before. This assignment should contain a summary of the students’ cumulative knowledge of the events of Reconstruction as well as their opinion of the success or failure of Reconstruction as seen through the eyes of their chosen “writers.”
Objective: Students will apply their knowledge of the Truth and Reconciliation
proceedings in South Africa to similar, hypothetical, proceedings that could have occurred during the Reconstruction Era. This entry will be written from the view point of an observer of these proceedings. As their “writers,” students can choose any of the ordinary citizens, black or white, from previous journal assignments ie: A formerly enslaved person, a former confederate soldier, a northern missionary traveling to the south to teach at a black school, etc. This assignment will be in three parts. Part one will be an observation of the actual proceedings. Parts two and three will be the writer’s observation of relations between blacks and whites in the town or city where the writer lives at two different times in the year following the proceedings. This entry should create a picture of what true reconciliation would have looked like in the South.
