Using the War as a Selling Point: Discovering a Local Community during the Civil War through Ads and Artifacts (Grades 3-5)

Katie Hickey Snyder

Summer Fellowship 2009

To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.

Lesson 4

Students examine artifacts sold in the Civil War advertisements to discover what life was like on the home front.

For this lesson, students should be seated in small groups.

Procedures

Using LCD projector, Smart board, or computer lab, show class examples of artifacts that match the items being sold in the Civil War advertisements. Images of the artifacts and advertisements are in the Annotated Bibliography.

• Using the picture of the Top Hat artifact fill out the document analysis as a whole group. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/misc/2007/nara/artifact_analysis_worksheet.pdf

• Individually, have students select an artifact that is mentioned in the Civil War ad they examined previously. The artifact should be one that interests them personally, as there will be a follow up writing activity using the artifact as a focal point. Images of artifacts are in the Annotated Bibliography.

• Students individually analyze the artifact. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/misc/2007/nara/artifact_analysis_worksheet.pdf

• Individually, students orally present their artifact to the small group.

• Within the small group, students evaluate each other using a rubric found at http://www.rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

Rubric number: 1768914

Ties to National Primary Source

Tie to similar national primary source artifacts found at the Smithsonian can be located at the following website:

http://www.civilwar.si.edu/collections.html