Between the Rivers

This unit Between the Rivers is comprised of two lessons encompassing approximately fifteen days.  Lesson One entitled Our Community focuses on the community in which we live and some of the many aspects of this community.  During this lesson, the students will study our community and become familiar with a few of the geographic features.  This lesson incorporates the natural resources that are in abundance in this area.  The second lesson in the unit will examine the natural resources more closely.

The second lesson in the unit entitled Cotton, Not Forgotten discusses the cultural contributions of the African American people.  At this time, slavery is introduced and students are comparing and contrasting their life today to that of slave children.  It is at this time that the natural resources common in this area are brought into the picture. Students are able to determine how these natural resources have been used in our area for many years and how they are still being used today. Many primary sources are used in this lesson to give the students a greater understanding of how the cultures of our area have developed over the years. Students are able to compare the cultural life of slave children to the cultural life of children today.

Our Community (Instructional Plan)

• The teacher will activate prior knowledge by having children describe houses, stores, and streets around where they live. The teacher will ask if they know the names of some of their neighbors and pets.
• The teacher will explain that the lesson is about communities, places where people live and how those places are alike and different.
• The teacher will guide students in recognizing characteristics of our region and explain natural resources that are found in this area. 
• The teacher will contact a member of the Cotton Museum in Bishopville, SC, and ask that member to come speak to the class on the importance of cotton in our community.

Guided Practice:

• The teacher will read aloud the fictional story entitled Lost and Found.
• The students will brainstorm ways in which the story is similar to the community in which they live. 
• The teacher will display a map of the United State of America and point out the state in which we live. At this time, the teacher will point out that we live on the continent of North America in the country of the United States. To understand the concept of a country, the teacher may want to explain that a continent can contain many countries. 
• The teacher will then display a map of South Carolina. He/She will point to the county of Dillon and explain that this is the county in which we live. 
• The teacher will use the Teaching U.S. History website to show the students a map, Mills’ Atlas, of South Carolina in 1825. The teacher will then point out that we will be studying this time frame in the next lesson. 
• The teacher will also use the South Carolina Information Highway website to show the students a map of Dillon County when it was part of Marion County. 
• The students will explain or identify key things that occurred when Dillon County was formed. 
• At this time, the teacher may want to display the aerial map of Latta and have students identify Latta Elementary School, Dillon County Library, and the police station. 
• The teacher will write the message: Tell about what you see in the neighborhood near our school. The children will then list on chart paper the places that they could show on a map of the school neighborhood. 
• The teacher will guide the students in making a map of the school neighborhood. 
• The teacher will accompany the children in singing a song about places to the tune of "The Green Grass Grows All Around." There is a world, the nicest world you ever could see. And the sun shines all around. Now on our world there is North America, the United States of America, South Carolina, Dillon County, and Latta. 
• The teacher will guide the students to think about the area around where they live. He/She will then ask the question: What does most of the land around where we live look like? Is it steep, or flat land? The teacher can also ask the students if they can name a big body of water that is in our state and near our community. 
• The teacher will then show the children a list of landform and plant regions. Choosing the region of the United States in which we live, the teacher will guide the students through that region pointing out different areas of interest. 
• After showing the book, a South Carolina Encyclopedia, the students will brainstorm on chart paper different natural resources that might be found in our local area. Using the book, The History of Dillon County, the teacher will also share a few interesting facts about our county. This will also allow the students to see the importance of some of these natural resources that are found in our area. 
• The teacher will then pass out cotton for students to touch. The teacher will identify that this is a natural resource found in our local area. At this time, one of the local cotton growers of the area will be asked to speak to the class on the importance of cotton. 
• The teacher will also bring in tobacco leaves for students to examine. She will then explain to them the importance of tobacco in our area. Students can list the similarities they see between cotton and tobacco. The teacher will tell the students that they will examine tobacco more closely in the next lesson. 

Independent Practice:

• After discussing the community and neighborhoods in which they live, the students will write about their neighborhoods, see Community Essay. The teacher will remind the students to write about both people and places and include a special landmark that will make their writing accurate and true to life. The writing will be assessed using an assessment rubric. 
• The students can work in pairs to draw pictures of and talk about things that are found in their neighborhoods, including people, stores, and parks. The students will illustrate their discussions and compare details of one neighborhood to another. 
• In the Social Studies Center, the students can create a rural area using small boxes and clay. 
• The students will work together in three groups gathering to represent three different neighborhoods. The children in each group will discuss and draw pictures of the neighborhood they represent. The children will then hold up their pictures and all of the "neighborhoods" (groups) will move closer together to become a "community." The students will then describe and name the community in which they live. 
• The students will complete the Flow Chart with vocabulary words country, state, and continent from the largest at the top to the smallest at the bottom. They will be required to identify each of the areas. 
• The students will complete a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting two different types of natural resources. 
• After hearing the member of the Cotton Museum in Bishopville, SC, speak on the importance of cotton in our area, the students will write about what they have learned about this important natural resource. 
• The students will write c0mments daily from the line of learning question in their journals. This will be assessed using the assessment rubric. 
• The students will retell the key concepts of this lesson either orally or in writing. Students may pantomime the key aspects and have other students determine the aspect of the lesson in which they were displaying. 
• The students will complete a Test assessing the knowledge of the material presented in the lesson using multiple choice questions and short answer questions.

Procedures

Lesson Plan: Cotton, Not Forgotten (Instructional Plan)

See attached lesson entitled, Cotton, Not Forgotten, to view Instructional Plan, Guided Practice, and Independent Practice.
http://teachingushistory.org/lessons/pdfs_and_docs/documents/documents/L...

Historical Background Notes
South Carolina is known as “a little triangle on the map” with only 31, 113 square miles. In this small state in the Deep South, there are six different land form regions. They range from the Coastal Zone to the Blue Ridge. The coastal plain, which comprises two-thirds of the state, is divided into the outer coastal plain and the inner coastal plain. The terrain in this area is mostly flat with the elevation rising from 220 to 300 feet above sea level. (Edgar, Walter. South Carolina A History. Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 1998.) It is in this area of the state that Dillon County is located.
Dillon County, which was once part of Craven County, was authorized by the English Lord’s Proprietors in 1682. Later the territory, that is now known as Dillon and Marion, was once included in the newly formed Liberty County. It remained there and in 1868 the name was changed to Marion County. Nevertheless, even through the many name changes, the area played a significant role in the economic, social, and political responses of the county. In 1910 Dillon County was established from the northern portion of Marion County.  The county became the forty-third in the Palmetto State and is almost triangular in shape.  (Stokes, Donald T.  The History of Dillon County.  Columbia, South Carolina:  The University of South Carolina Press, 1998.)

Dillon County is located in the northeast quadrant of South Carolina.  It is bordered to the west by Marlboro County and the Great Pee Dee River; on the south by its parent county, Marion; on the east by the Lumber River; and to the north by the state line of North Carolina.  It is an area rich in agricultural resources. (Stokes, Donald T.  The History of Dillon County South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina:  The University of South Carolina Press, 1978.) The history of the area is just as diverse as its natural resources.  Many of the old plantations of this area are still in existence today and are part of our agricultural production.

The county, now known as” quietly progressive,” is known for its vast amount of farm land and excellent growing conditions.  Two of the main commodities of the area, both at the time of slavery and today, are cotton and tobacco.  Farm acreage suitable for these crops can be found in great quantities in and around Dillon County.  This is due in large part to the fact that most of the people who settled in this county were well versed in the many phases of agriculture.   Rich, fertile river and creek land drew many good farmers to this area also. These families have passed the colonial farming methods down through the generations.  With knowledge from the past and the new methods of today, farming is a growing economy.  In fact, agriculture remains one of the many leading industries of growth in the state of South Carolina today.

Slave labor was an integral factor in the agricultural production of the state.  Before 1865 slaves played a significant role in the developing culture of South Carolina.  The economy of the state was largely based on the plantation system which depended on slave labor.  Slaves brought much of their African culture with them, including their knowledge of farming.  They also brought other aspects of their culture such as language, dance, woodcarving, and basket weaving.  They reared their children in a culture that was steeped in their African roots, from cooking practices to folklore.  The language, called Gullah, was a spoken language of Africans that could allow them to freely communicate with one another.  Gullah was and still is unique to the state due to the area’s limited access and large concentration of Africans from many different regions.  However, the slaves were never as numerous as the whites in our area of the state.  Many of the plantation owners had anywhere from one to a dozen slaves. (Edgar, Walter.  South Carolina A History.  Columbia, South Carolina:  The University of South Carolina Press, 1998.) These slaves were used to cultivate the many acres of farm land across the county.  After emancipation, the census records show that most of the freed slaves remained in the area and took on the surname of their former masters.  (Stokes, Donald T.  The History of Dillon County South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina:  University of South Carolina Press, 1978.)
Freed African Americans looked for ways to make a living after the end of slavery.  Many looked to the landowners to continue providing farming jobs as a means of survival.  Therefore, the landowners set up a new system to replace slavery called sharecropping in which the sharecropper gave the landowner a share of the crop, or they worked their own plots of land and paid the land owners a fixed rent. This is probably due to the fact that many of the slaves formed a bond with the overseers or masters and stayed on as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.  On the other hand, the tenant farmer lived on the land provided by the farmer using the equipment of the farmer.  The tenant farmer often became indebted to the farmer in many ways. 

This was the case in many of the existing plantations of the county.  The Bethea family of Dillon County, who received an original land grant, owned and operated a plantation in this area from the late 1700’s to the present.  It is at this location that one of the slave cemeteries in the county can be found.  Ten or more headstones and numerous unmarked graves tell a story from the beginnings of slavery to emancipation and beyond.  Just before emancipation, the Bethea family had decided that the slaves on their plantations should be given plots of land on the west side of Reedy Creek.  This area is now known as the Skillet.  A descendent of the Bethea family, who was a census taker in 1963, was given the area of the Skillet as his territory.  He found that many families held his family in high esteem due to the gift that was given to their families many years before. 

The Hewn-Timber cabins, located on the grounds of Francis Marion University, and the Bethea plantation are both examples of what slave life was like in our area of the state.  The cabins were built by African Americans who came to Mars Bluff as slaves in 1836.  They depict the living conditions of slaves in our area.  (Vernon, Amelia Wallace.  African Americans at Mars Bluff, South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina:  University of South Carolina Press, 1995.)  Therefore, it is evident from these primary sources that slavery was once a way of life for many African Americans.

Examples of Students Work
Community Essay

• http://teachingushistory.org/pdfs/CommunityEssay.pdf

Our Community Test

• http://teachingushistory.org/pdfs/OurCommunityTest.pdf

Vocabulary Flow Chart

• http://teachingushistory.org/pdfs/VocabularyFlowChart.pdf

See assessments (Flow Chart, Venn Diagram, Test) of Our Community

• http://teachingushistory.org/pdfs/OurCommunityAssessment.pdf

See attached assessments of Cotton, Not Forgotten

• Written test found in resources

Writing Rubric
4 - Writing addresses topic and is clear and focused; mechanics are correct.
3 - Writing addresses topic and uses appropriate words; minor errors in     mechanics.
2 - Writing addresses topic, but is vague; some words used incorrectly.
1 - Writing does not address topic.