Lesson Ideas

PA Civil War 150 Website

October 9, 2009

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (also on Twitter @phmc) launched a new website dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the role Pennsylvania played in that war.  In addition to the new website, the commission also announced that there will be a Pennsylvania Civil War Road Show.  According to a press [...]

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The Journal of Harriet Tubman

September 25, 2009

While the website is from 2006, here is an interesting idea on how to use a blog in the classroom. http://dowell.typepad.com/harriet_tubman/ The students in this classroom have researched a historical figure and created a blog that reflects entries as that historical person. The famous person in this case is Harriet Tubman. The students in this [...]

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More Statistics…Still too little time

September 7, 2009

Well, I’m not a statistician by any means and I even struggled with the stats for my dissertation. But for some reason, I have quite a few blog posts on statistics. So, why not one more: The following tables are the number of Union and Confederate soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured during the [...]

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Using Photos Part 2

August 22, 2009

Okay, so back in December I asked you to take a look at the following photograph so we could explore all of its hidden treasures. This photograph shows the same building from my December 8th post that showed wounded soldiers from the battles in the “Wilderness” at Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 1864. This Gardner photograph of [...]

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Using Photos Part 1

August 8, 2009

So I thought that I would start a series on how to use photographs from the Civil War era in order to increase understanding. Looking at photographs can tell us a great deal about many different aspects of the war. Today we will discuss the following photograph from the Library of Congress website: This photo [...]

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Choices & Commitments: Soldiers @ Gettysburg

July 3, 2009

The National Park Service has created a series of lesson plans known as Teaching with Historic Places and one of those historic places is Gettysburg. Choices and Commitments: The Soldiers at Gettysburg is one such lesson plan. This lesson plan starts with an inquiry question that asks the students to examine a photo of the [...]

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Gettysburg Photographs

June 25, 2009

Mike Lynaugh has put together a collection of original Civil War photographs on his website Virtual Civil War. This collection of Civil War photographs will allow your students to view some excellent photos or provide you with some primary sources to display for conversation starters within the classroom. The collection contains a good variety of [...]

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Confederate Memorial Museum in Oklahoma

June 7, 2009

Wesley Fryer of the Moving at the Speed of Creativity Blog visited the Confederate Memorial Museum in Oklahoma and while touring the museum he took photographs of the various displays and then used Voicethread to post a narrated slide show to his blog. Check it out HERE. This is a great way for you to [...]

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The HomeFront: Women and the Civil War

May 17, 2009

The roles women played during the Civil War have only recently been given the same respect as famous generals and battles. If we look in the context of this time period, the woman was considered the light of the hearth and home. Upon her fell the duty of managing the home, bearing and teaching the [...]

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More uses of Web 2.0 Tools

May 12, 2009

Mr. T, an 8th grade American Cultures teacher at Hershey Middle School, is the author of the American Cultures 2.0 blog. While reviewing his blog recently, I noticed that he has developed two great uses of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching the Civil War. The first one is called What stories do these Civil War [...]

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Using Photographs from the LOC

March 29, 2009

As many of you know, the Library of Congress has a website called Selected Civil War Photographs. This page makes browsing the photographs easy because they have a Search feature, a Subject browse, or you can look at photos from each year of the War. There is also information about Understand and Working with the [...]

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Teaching the Civil War with YouTube.

March 21, 2009

I have to admit right up front that I am not a big user of YouTube.   I have viewed some clips that people have sent me but I’m not a regular user. That being said, someone sent me a link the other evening to a video of a Civil War Fife & Drum group playing [...]

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Civil War Lessons in netTrekker

February 18, 2009

The following post is from Dawn Crawford, a training specialist with netTrekker.  Her post discusses some Civil War lesson plan ideas available in netTrekker. ——————————————————————————————————————————————— One of my favorite memories from middle school is a family trip to Gettysburg.  I will never get the memorials and stories at the battlefield out of my head – [...]

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Introducing Civil War Sallie

February 10, 2009

As part of her Pa Middle School Computer Fair project, my daughter has created a very cool project.  Based on an idea called Morpheus Fortuna, she has created an educational “follow me” project to get kids to learn more about the Civil War and using technology in the classroom. Introducing Civil War Sallie. Sallie is [...]

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Using Art to teach about the Civil War pt 1.

February 5, 2009

So the other day at lunch time, it was a nice day so I decided to take a walk outside and I found myself heading for the state museum. I walked up to the area for the Civil War and found it under renovation, however they did have some paintings there and I began to [...]

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Save the Date: National Teach-In on Lincoln!!

January 30, 2009

This showed up in my inbox so I thought I would share. Save the Date: National Teach-In on Lincoln!! History Channel invites you to join The National Teach-In on Lincoln February 12th 2009 at 1:30 PM ET HISTORY™, together with the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, will feature a National Teach-In on the life and legacy [...]

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Clara Barton Short Story

January 23, 2009

I had to write a short story for my literature class so I decided to write about Clara Barton at the Battle of Antietam.  Hope you enjoy reading my story. ——————————————————————————————————————————————– It was September 17, 1862 and in the small town of Sharpsburg, Maryland a major battle of the Civil War was taking place.  Soldiers [...]

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Hearing the Civil War: Music of the Civil War

December 14, 2008

Various types of music played key roles throughout the Civil War from the fife and drum to the bugle calls which rallied the soldiers and directed them on the parade ground and in battle. There were sentimental and patriotic songs which soldiers sung in camp in order to pass the time while remembering the homes [...]

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Google Time Line Feature

October 27, 2008

Thanks to Chris C over at the Sparks of Hope Blog for this one: Did you know that Google has a timeline feature? Go to Google.com and type the following into the search box: civil war view:timeline Or you can click HERE This will give you a timeline of the Civil War. You can then [...]

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