Comments on Day One

Here was today's lesson plan, the first of a 3-day review unit on Antebellum reform:

Day One

Objectives:

Formulate questions through inquiry and determine importance of historical events during Antebellum era.

Determine significance of different kinds of change during Antebellum era.

Materials:

Students- Pen/Pencil, binders with paper

Teachers- Reformers handouts; laptop carts or computer lab

Activities:

-Do Now: What ideas/names/images enter your mind when you hear the phrase “Antebellum Reform”?

-Distribute handouts featuring names of reformers from Antebellum era (some famous, other not as famous). Students will examine their textbooks (The Americans) to identify some of the reformers who appear in the textbooks.

-Students will use computers to identify those reformers not mentioned in their textbooks.

-Students will get in groups of 3-4 and discuss why some reformers are mentioned in the textbook while others are not.

-Share key points of discussion: why did some reformers make the textbook while others did not? Who made that decision? What does that tell you about the nature of history as a discipline? How would you determine the importance of historical events/figures?

-Discuss historiography, biases. Analyze the quote "Whoever controls the present controls the past."

Review: What were some of the major movements during Antebellum reform (woman’s rights, abolitionism, educational reform, etc.)?

Homework: Write a 2-3 paragraph explanation outlining how you would determine whether someone deserves to appear in a U.S. history textbook OR design a rubric measuring their worthiness.

Assessment: Informal questioning of individual students to check comprehension

HOW IT WENT:

Overall, I would rate this lesson as a success. Students had very little prior knowledge (no one could identify when the Antebellum period was!) but they were eager to learn which characters were "History book worthy" and which weren't. Many students thought Robert Smalls should be in the book. Several commented that Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, seemed to be dropped into the book with little context. It was rewarding to hear the students evaluating the historiography of this time period.

The laptops behaved pretty well: this was the first time I used the laptop cart without having a handful of students falling way behind when their computers failed to load properly.

This was a good way to expose students to Antebellum reform movements briefly but in a meaningful way. My course is Modern American History, but I made sure my students understood several Antebellum reform movements were related to 20th century movements. Women's suffrage and the civil rights movement have their antecedents in the Antebellum period, after all. Later this year I can refer back to this lesson when we get to topics such as women's rights and prohibition.