Forces of Unity and Division

Students will read letters written in history and see how they tell the story of the past and what society and the culture was like at the time.  After learning more about sectionalism and the division occurring during  Antebellum Era, each student group will create infographs that analyze their primary sources. Each group, as a culminating activity,  will create a presentation, using their analysis of the three issues from their infographs.  The presentation should answer the essential question. The presentation will be presented to the class and the class will vote as to whether they successfully proved their point of view as to whether sectionalism caused the issues or the issues were caused by sectionalism.
Step 1:
Divide the class into groups. Using primary source documents, students will identify the issue and categorize each document based on the issue addressed, whether the issue is a social issue, economic issue or political issue. Students should also hypothesize whether the issue is primarily one that affects the north or south.

Students should use the Word Cloud Anaylsis document found in the Resources to record for their findings.

Step 2:
Each group will create 3 Infographs/Word Clouds from their primary source documents, one dealing with economics, one dealing with social issues, and one dealing with political issues.

They will use the Infograph/Word Cloud analysis sheet to analyze the terms that stand out from their primary source document.
Step 3: 
Each group will create a presentation using the analysis of the primary source documents and answer the essential question with the presentation. The group should tie the evidence they learned directly to the answer they are presenting in their presentation.

Additional Activities

• Share a variety of historical letters where people share historical details and political views. Have whole group discussion OR a real-time online academic discussion sharing facts and ideas students learned from the letters using Padlet or Todaysmeet..
• Student complete the provided outline of chapter using provided resources.  Students may work in pairs.  *Differentiation may require teacher goes through presentation whole group instead.
• Once outline is complete, students will compose a letter using  Google document or equivalent software to a friend in another part of America explaining their life at the time during the Antebellum Era giving specific details regarding one or more events and sharing your political views of either a Federalist or a Democratic-Republican. The student will then copy and paste this letter into Google Classroom Question.  Students will not be able to see each other’s responses until they submit their own letter! :)
• Teacher will have the gClassroom settings for all students to see and reply to each other.  Once they reply they will be able to see classmates’ responses.

For homework: students will read through a variety of letters and choose ONE letter to reply back to either agreeing or countering what was said.  Reply MUST contain at least one additional fact or detail not mentioned in original letter. Students can not reply if someone has already replied - each letter must get a response. 
 

Find the Assessment for this lesson at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ifHzOCh0O-cmCOE6ieHtFeuW4nKSOyZdlCaM...