Abraham Lincoln

Teaser

This lesson leads students to see how Lincoln's life in Springfield influenced important national issues.

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Description

Students analyze Abraham Lincoln's adult life in Springfield, Illinois, and its influence on his political thinking.

Article Body

This lesson provides an opportunity for students to see how Lincoln's home and life in Springfield influenced the way he thought about the important issues of the time. Students answer questions about photographs and maps to develop a context for thinking about documents related to Lincoln and the Civil War. An engaging set of vintage photographs and maps shows Lincoln's world and helps students better understand the spirit of the times. But the real strength of this lesson is in the excellent text resources and accompanying questions provided for students. We especially like the carefully excerpted passages from key speeches by Abraham Lincoln that are provided in the readings section of the resources. We suggest that teachers use this excellent set of materials to design their own final writing assignment. We would love to see something that has students make explicit their understanding of how Lincoln's political ideas were influenced by the place and time in which he lived and died. Students could use evidence from both the visual and print media they have studied to write an essay on this topic. Another approach would be to assign separate essays relating to specific texts such as Lincoln's Farewell Address to Springfield. The suggested activities, listed in the Putting it All Together section of the lesson plan, unfortunately do not focus on helping students do this kind of synthesis.

Topic
Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Civil War
Time Estimate
1-2 class sessions
flexibility_scale
3
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Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

The supplementary resources for teachers are excellent.

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes Background readings are provided for students.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes Students read primary and secondary sources and answer questions about them. Teachers can be selective about which questions to feature. We recommend requiring written answers.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes Guided questions are included to help students analyze the resource materials. We particularly like the questions that ask students to compare different sources to create their answer. However, the lesson lacks a culminating activity that requires students to interpret and synthesize the set of materials. Teachers will need to devise a task that requires this.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes The lesson uses a variety of sources. However, students may need reminders to pay close attention to the date and location of the source's origin as there are no explicit questions that help them do so.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Students at lower skill levels may require additional guidance from the teacher.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes Significant portions of texts are excerpted or highlighted to make reading easier. In addition a structured photo analysis worksheet is provided to help students learn to interpret visual evidence.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No No assessment strategies or criteria are included.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes Directions are clear and the materials are suitable for all classrooms. Specific instructions on how to use historic sites to teach history are provided.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

No Several different learning goals are attainable with these materials. We suggest that teachers make use of the strong visual component in this lesson to highlight how non-textual sources of evidence can help us understand how Lincoln developed and expressed his political ideas.

Declaration of Independence: Rough Draft to Proclamation

Teaser

How did the final version of the Declaration differ from Jefferson's draft?

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Description

Using carefully prepared excerpts, students compare and analyze differences between Jefferson's original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the final version of the document. They read closely and gain experience in document analysis.

Article Body

We love the way this lesson challenges students to closely read and analyze the two versions of the Declaration of Independence. The two versions of the opening paragraphs of the Declaration are placed side-by-side, in small, manageable chunks of text. Even if a teacher were not using this particular lesson plan, this presentation would be especially useful in helping all students access an otherwise difficult text. Other reading and analysis supports include guiding questions and a step where the teacher models the process of comparing the juxtaposed texts.

The lesson begins with students looking at the first pages of the original documents and answering questions that get at the historical context of the documents, before doing careful analysis of the transcribed prose. These procedures potentially convey the necessity of slowing down to read, question, and understand primary sources. And they do so using the Declaration of Independence, a document that all students SHOULD read!

As it stands, the lesson has plenty of opportunity for reading and discussion, but requires very little writing. Teachers may want to enhance the writing component of this lesson by having students write responses to some or all of the discussion questions. There is also an engaging extension activity that could be enhanced by requiring written responses.

Topic
Declaration of Independence, American Revolution
Time Estimate
One day
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes The lesson includes links to background information on the writing of the Declaration of Independence, but it assumes some familiarity with the political events of the time leading up to the Declaration.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes This lesson focuses almost entirely on closely reading the two versions of the document. It calls for some student writing, but there are many points in the lesson at which teachers could easily insert additional writing tasks. For example, students could write responses to most of the lesson's discussion questions.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes This occurs primarily in the final task, where students suggest possible reasons for the changes between the rough and final drafts. Given sufficient background information, it could also occur as part of the discussion in step three regarding historical context.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes Discussion questions are structured so students must read both versions of the Declaration closely and carefully in order to answer them.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Some vocabulary may be challenging for some students, but it is well scaffolded: students have an opportunity to identify and define difficult vocabulary before analyzing the document itself, and the text is presented in small, manageable chunks.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes This lesson includes excellent discussion questions to support students' analysis of the documents, and the documents themselves are presented in an accessible format. Also, the teacher models the process of comparing the two versions of the document before students do it on their own.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No The final task at the end of step five could be used as a closing assessment, but no assessment criteria are provided.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The text on this site is very small; teachers will want to adjust computer or browser display settings to enlarge it for easier reading.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

A Look at Slavery through Posters and Broadsides

Teaser

How to identify the author, audience, date, and message of historical posters.

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Description

Using historic posters, this lesson engages students in analyzing primary sources by identifying their author, intended audience, date, and message.

Article Body

This well-planned lesson, which uses posters on slavery and abolition, teaches students to ask important questions as they read a primary source. First, the teacher models the task by analyzing a representative poster in front of the classroom. In small groups, students then analyze additional posters, locating such information as author, audience, purpose, and message. They use this information to consider the attitudes towards slavery that the posters convey.

One strength of the lesson is that the primary sources are given in two formats: students receive historically evocative reproductions of the original posters along with easy-to-read typed transcriptions. Some teachers may choose to highlight important text, particularly for beginning readers; other teachers will want to leave it up to students to locate and identify this crucial information.

This lesson appears in the December 2004 issue of History Now, a quarterly journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Topic
Slavery and Abolition
Time Estimate
1 day
flexibility_scale
2
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes Lesson is accurate and up-to-date.

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

No The lesson plan's Teacher Resources section includes links to information about historical context. It's up to teachers, however, to decide how much background students will need.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes In class, all students read, and one student per group records information on a Poster Inquiry Sheet. In the suggested homework assignment, students each write a news story about their assigned poster.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes The Poster Inquiry Sheet provides students with a method for identifying and interpreting historical facts.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes During the modeling and the group work, students learn and practice how to read primary sources.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes Some language in the posters may be difficult, but teachers can choose to highlight sections of text to reduce the amount or difficulty of necessary reading.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes The teacher's modeling step provides a helpful scaffold, as does the Poster Inquiry Sheet.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No Although the lesson plan does not include an assessment rubric, teachers can check in with small groups to assess student learning.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes The modeling provided in Steps One, Two, and Three is pedagogically useful. However, reading every single poster before the class may be excessively time-consuming. Teachers may want to discuss just one poster and then go around the classroom to check in with small groups as needed.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes The lesson plan helps students to learn about slavery and abolition while providing a method for analyzing primary sources.

The Jack London Online Collection

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The full-text versions of more than 40 works by Jack London (1876–1916), a prominent early 20th-century writer who was also involved in the socialist movement, are available here. Materials include famous fiction, such as The Call of the Wild (1903), and lesser-known works, such as War of the Classes (1905), a collection of speeches London delivered on behalf of socialism. The website includes 20 novels, 19 short story collections, two collections of essays, three plays, and six additional published nonfiction works. The website is keyword searchable. In addition to providing the writings of Jack London, there is plenty of biographical and historical information about London and his times. Outside resources are suggested, divided into those suitable for students and those for teachers. Combining London's original works with other contextual materials provided by the site could be valuable for studying early 20th-century American literature and journalism and its relation to radical political and social currents of the time.

Race and Place

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Annotation

This archive addresses Jim Crow, or racial segregation, laws from the late 1880s until the mid-20th century, focusing on the town of Charlottesville, VA. The theme is the connection of race with place by understanding the lives of African Americans in the segregated South. Political materials includes seven political broadsides and a timeline of African American political activity in Charlottesville and Virginia. Census data includes searchable databases containing information about individual African Americans taken from the 1870 and 1910 Charlottesville census records. City records includes information on individual African Americans and African American businesses. Oral histories includes audio files from over 37 interviews. Personal papers contains indexes to the Benjamin F. Yancey family papers and the letters of Catherine Flanagan Coles. Newspapers, still in progress, includes more than 1,000 transcribed articles from or about Charlottesville or Albemarle from two major African American newspapers—the Charlottesville Recorder and the Richmond Planet. Images has links to two extensive image collections, the Holsinger Studio Collection and the Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs, and three smaller collections.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

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Annotation

This is one of the richest collections of anti-slavery and Civil War materials in the world. Reverend Samuel J. May, an American abolitionist, donated his collection of anti-slavery materials to the Cornell Library in 1870. Following May's lead, other abolitionists in the U.S. and Great Britain contributed materials. The collection now consists of more than 10,000 pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides, local anti-slavery society newsletters, sermons, essays, and arguments for and against slavery. Materials date from 1704 to 1942 and cover slavery in the United States and the West Indies, the slave trade, and emancipation. More than 300,000 pages are available for full-text searching. Accompanying the documents are eight links to other collections.

American Radicalism Collection

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This website contains 129 pamphlets, documents, and newsletters produced by or relevant to radical movements. Groups represented by one to 30 documents include the American Indian Movement; Asian Americans; the Black Panthers; the Hollywood Ten; the Ku Klux Klan, the IWW, and the Students for a Democratic Society. Additional situations covered include the Rosenberg case, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Scottsboro Boys. Additional topics include birth control and the events at Wounded Knee. This is a small but useful resource on radicalism, political movements, and rhetoric.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875

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An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th-century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815–1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the website offers close to 3,000 texts by 1,456 authors. These include the well known, such as Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain as well as hundreds of less well-known authors. Topics include slavery, reform, education, politics, love, children, and war. Close to 800 have been fully edited and SGML-encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of content hyperlinks. The remaining texts can be read either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. The ability to perform single word and phrase searches on all material in the database—whether fully encoded or not—is powerful.

Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis and Clark and the Revealing of America

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Thomas Jefferson outlined three motivating factors in his instructions to Lewis and Clark: a search for navigable rivers to span the continent; a quest for Edenic beauty and riches; and the competitive desire to acquire a continental empire. These 180 documents and artifacts interpret 19th-century westward exploration from this perspective. The range of materials is striking. In addition to maps, plans, and charts, the site offers images (sketches, watercolors, etchings, and engravings), texts (letters, diaries, speeches, newspapers, and books), and tools (surveying and medical instruments, cooking utensils, armaments). The exhibit opens with an examination of the "imperial mentality" common to Virginia's aristocratic class in the late 18th century and then focuses on the Lewis and Clark journey. It ends with the subsequent expeditions of Zebulon Pike, Stephen H. Long, Charles Wilkes, John Charles Fremont, and the mid-19th century transcontinental railroad plan that supplanted the search for a water route.

Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860

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More than 100 published materials on legal aspects of slavery are available on this website. These include 8,700 pages of court decisions and arguments, reports, proceedings, journals, and a letter. Most of the pamphlets and books pertain to American cases in the 19th century. Additional documents address the slave trade, slave codes, the Fugitive Slave Law, and slave insurrections as well as presenting courtroom proceedings from famous trials such as the 18th-century Somerset v. Stewart case in England, the Amistad case, the Denmark Vesey conspiracy trial, and trials of noted abolitionists John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison. A special presentation discusses the slave code in the District of Columbia. Searchable by keyword, subject, author, and title, this site is valuable for studying legal history, African American history, and 19th-century American history.