Vocabulary Review
One of the key strategies in my unit is associated with making sure that students understand the relevant vocabulary. I will utilize flash cards, word maps and concept webs to make sure that students understand the key terminology that is associated with the era of the Civil War, such as confederate, union, conspiracy, assassination, emancipation and numerous others. Students will need to build background knowledge on non-fiction terms, such as memoir, biography and the various textual features that are associated with non-fiction reading. Finally, the terminology associated with object study will need to be studied. Words, such as object, artifact, survey, and others, will need to be understood before my students will be able to truly grasp the material and approach we will take.
I often have students categorize vocabulary. Once we have encountered fifteen to twenty new words, I pair them up, give them a glue stick, a baggie of words and construction paper and ask them to categorize the words in four columns. You can either provide the categories or students can come up with their own. Sometimes the categories are simple terms for the parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, article), other times they can be more specific. Once they have their four categories written across the top of their paper, students can get to work discussing words and pasting them in the columns. In this unit I will mix vocabulary words and images of objects for students to categorize. For example, if one of the listed categories is “household items,” the vertical list may include an image of a coffee grinder, the word “utensil,” an image of a bed warmer, and the words “candelabra” and “butter churner.” Students enjoy this activity and it is a good way to get them working in groups and really thinking about the words and objects that they learn in the unit. Have the pairs compare their work when they are finished and discuss the decision-making while categorizing the words and images. Finally, hang up the category sheets (which students can decorate if they like) in the classroom as a reference to vocabulary and objects in the unit.
Group Discussions/Reading
As mentioned previously, one thing that has really become key to my success as a reading teacher is group work. Whether working on vocabulary review, reading comprehension, phonics or spelling, small group work (the teacher sitting with four or five students while the rest of the class works independently) makes a big difference in students’ success. I find that grouping students at similar Lexile or reading levels helps everyone improve at their own pace. Reading together in small groups, either as a whole group, or paired up, makes reading a group effort that all students can engage in to the best of their abilities. For this unit I will bring some object that is related to the reading to the groups each week. We will discuss it, pass it around and just simply leave it on the small table with us as we go through our readings.
Show and Tell
“Show and Tell” is a fun activity usually associated with younger, elementary-aged students. It is an activity that captivates an audience and is really at the heart of object study and this unit. It requires the audience to look closely at an object, perhaps touching it as it is passed around. Students naturally formulate questions and make connections between the object and their own lives. I will incorporate Show and Tell into my middle school classroom, inviting students to bring in objects from their homes that have some meaning or significance to them. I am certain that my students in grades 5-8 will embrace this activity and clamor for their chance to bring in an object. I would venture that high school students will also be interested in the activity, perhaps remove the title “show and tell” to eliminate the elementary stigma that the activity suggests.
To get the activity started, I suggest teachers begin with an interesting item from their own lives. Treat the object as if it were an object in an art museum and encourage close analysis of the object. Refer back to the “Viewing Art” section of this unit to utilize one of the many techniques for introducing art to students. Look around at home for something interesting for students to explore during your initial session; buttons, bottles, trophies, trinkets, photos, childhood toys, and an infinite number of other objects could serve the purpose of this part of the lesson. For this particular unit, I will bring in an old-fashioned coffee grinder with its rotating handle on top and a small drawer on the bottom. As the teacher, I will bring in an object that I can associate with the unit and 19th-century life. Students, of course, will more than likely bring in modern objects that are dear to them and that is fine as long as the class takes this opportunity to observe, perhaps touch, and contemplate the objects.
Journal Writing
Journal writing has always been a mainstay of my language arts classroom. I ask students to purchase the soft cover black and white composition books which are inexpensive and can be found anywhere. Students keep the journals in my room so that we can use them throughout the school year. There are a variety of ways to set up the journals with different labeled sections depending on what you want to emphasize with your students. I usually have students create a table of contents and several sections within the journal including a vocabulary section, a section for response to literature, a free write section and a doodle section. There are many ways to set up journals in your classroom and there are numerous resources with great ideas for setting up journals as well. I recommend Ralph Fletcher’s A Writer’s Notebook, but there are numerous others. Having journals in the classroom provides students with an easy access, low maintenance record for both reading and writing. Students should be encouraged to write in their journals often and in a variety of formats. Listings, timelines, free writes, vocabulary lists, responses to literature, doodling, drawing, personal entries (which I assure student I will not look at if they signal to me through folding the pages or some other means), questions, and note-taking can all be included in students’ journals. The journals not only become a collection of student work, but individual reflections of personalities and writing styles. Some possible journal topics that might accompany this unit are:
- Write a journal entry from an object’s point of view. For example, what would John Wilkes Booth’s spur say about the night Lincoln was assassinated? What message might the pen which Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation relate after signing this incredibly important document?
- Write a journal entry of an alternative ending to Lincoln’s final visit to Ford’s Theater.
- Write a journal entry from John Wilkes Booth’s point of view on the night of Lincoln’s assassination.
- Write a journal entry in the voice of Elizabeth Keckley describing the work put into one of the first lady’s dresses.
- Write a journal entry in the voice of one of the mourners along the Lincoln Funeral Train route. What objects of mourning did they note either on the funeral car or amongst the onlookers?
- Write a journal entry from the point of view of one of the actors on the stage at Ford’s Theater on Friday, April 15, 1865.
- Describe what you see in a portrait or photo.
- Write a journal entry describing an object from the night of the assassination.
Field Trips
Field trips can be a great way to get students used to the concept of object study, getting up close and sometimes interacting with objects. For this reason, I feel that a field trip to a local museum would be a useful “uploading” experience for students, and should be taken early in the implementation of the unit. If a docent or museum curator is available for your group, I would inform them of your plans for the unit, emphasizing the introduction of object study as part of your journey. If you are on your own at your local museum, implement some of the techniques mentioned earlier in the unit for observing art, or come up with one of your own.
Object Timeline
Creating timelines is a useful activity when reading something in which the chronological order of events is an important part of the story. The assassination of Lincoln and the subsequent manhunt leading to the death of John Wilkes Booth is such a story. Students may need a brief introduction to the concept of timelines. I will introduce several examples of timelines and explain that the visual representation of time is useful not only for our unit, but for other classes and lessons when the sequence of events is key to the story. What makes the timeline assignment in this unit different is that students will be asked to illustrate or represent objects along the timeline that are associated with the brief snippet of time which we are studying. Students will work in groups on the activity, which I will introduce early in the unit and allow them to come back to several times as we read, make observations, and draw out connections with the objects associated with the Lincoln assassination. The end result will be an object-illustrated visual representation of the events connected with the unit.
Ford’s Theater/National Portrait Gallery Scavenger Hunt
Another group activity that students will certainly enjoy is the Ford’s Theater/National Portrait Gallery Scavenger hunt. Have students work in pairs to search the two sites on the internet to find and identify objects in the search. I have limited my search to two sites so that students are not overwhelmed with too much information and teachers should make adjustments to meet the needs of their particular units. The Ford’s Theater website and virtual tour is an amazing resource for this unit that will allow students to observe a plethora of objects, photos and information associated with the tragic event. The National Portrait Gallery currently has an online exhibit entitled Meserve Collection Highlights; Modern Prints from Mathew Brady’s Portrait Negatives. The exhibit includes “nine modern prints from Brady’s original photographic negatives. Portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ulysses S. Grant, and Emma, Queen of Hawai‘i are featured, along with an original, glass-plate negative and one of Brady’s wooden storage boxes.”5 The National Portrait Gallery site gives access to thousands of images. For example, a search for Mary Todd Lincoln resulted in thirty-four images, one of which was from Meserve collection showing a glass plate collodion negative of Mary Todd Lincoln posing in a dress made by Elizabeth Keckley. The accompanying museum label on the portrait is very informative, briefly mentioning the first lady’s relationship with the president and the mental instability that resulted from the pressure of that role, the loss of two of her sons and the death of her husband. This one image, one object encases so much information and really highlights the value of an object study. Again, there are thousands of images on the site that can be used for this activity.
In designing your own scavenger hunt, simply look through some of the aforementioned images and objects and provide a short list for students working in partners to look for on the sites. I will cut up the list into individual objects/images and allow students to choose them randomly. Ask students to note where exactly they found the artifacts and to also list one or two facts about the items that they were able to find. Turn the activity into a competition by having students continue to choose random items, the first group to find five wins. For a more challenging hunt, add other items from other websites noted in the unit. The Ford’s Theater site also has a virtual scavenger hunt online that students can utilize.
The Lincoln Assassination Living Museum Activity
The culminating activity in this unit is the Lincoln Assassination Living Museum Activity. This is a fun and interesting way for students to not only review and summarize their learning, but to also educate younger students on the readings and on the use of material objects as a learning tool. The activity will take a lot of preparation on behalf of both students and teachers, but the end product can be presented multiple times for different audiences.
First, review the chronological nature of the unit with students. We started with a bit of background focusing on the mood of the country and John Wilkes Booth’s state of mind as a representation of many Americans in 1865. We moved to the night of the assassination, inside Ford’s theater, as described in the Swanson article, and then out on the streets, as retold by Elizabeth Keckley. The next article brought us on the manhunt that eventually led to Booth’s death, followed by the article on the funeral train which carried Lincoln’s body back to his hometown for burial. Use the object timelines which we created in the unit to refresh students’ memories. Rhe scavenger hunt activity will help students utilize museum objects to set the stage for the living museum.
The living museum will be set up according to the six texts which we encountered in the unit. Students can volunteer, or you can assign them to present some object at each station which will represent that part of the story. Students can dress up or simply tell the story of the object. For example, one student in the first station might play Booth, displaying the ticket that he used to get into the theater that night. A student manning the second station (focusing on what went on at Ford’s theater) might bring in a musical instrument and explain that they were in the pit at the theater, playing music when the incident happened. Another student might present a marble-like ball and explain that this was the lone bullet that was lodged in Lincoln’s head and took his life. At the Keckley station, a student could dress in a gown and explain that this dress was made for the president’s wife that evening, while another student (focusing on the manhunt) might display a horseshoe and explain how Booth’s horse was waiting for him outside the back door of the theater. At the station focusing on Lincoln’s funeral train, a student might hold up dark drapes and explain how all the buildings and the train car itself were draped in black to show mourning. At the final station, a Walt Whitman impersonator might read from a tattered copy of “O Captain! My Captain!” or show students a quill tip pen he used to write with. While we will not have the original artifacts, we can find or create similar objects and display the original artifacts on computers opened to sites we found in earlier research and activities.
One or more students will need to be the tour guide and lead small groups of visitors through the living museum. Depending on the needs and feasibility of each teacher and class, this activity can be kept fairly simple or can be extremely elaborate with costumes, settings, music or other embellishments that visitors can enjoy.
