Lesson 1: Book Creation and Discussion about writing history

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Essential Questions:

Why do people gather history? How do they do it?

Materials needed:

Students will need sheets of notebook paper and a large piece of construction paper to put together their research booklet.

Setting the Purpose:

The first day, students will ponder the purpose of the unit (researching history, how history is created) and review Civil War knowledge to introduce the unit.

Procedure:

1. On a large piece of butcher paper, have children brainstorm answers to questions: Why do people study history? and/or Why do they want to know about the past?

2. On a second sheet of butcher paper, have students brainstorm answers to the question: How do people gather history?

3. Explain that during the next few weeks, each student will become a historical researcher. All students will be looking at the same historical item, but as the process goes on, they will branch off into their own research using their own questions they are curious about.

4. Don’t tell them what the item is, but do tell them that it is from the Civil War era (pre and post as well) that we will be doing investigation.

5. This unit should be done at the end of a Civil War unit preferably. Have the students get in groups of 4-5 and come up with a list of descriptors for this period (what the people were like, what was going on politically, economically, etc).

6. In the last part of class, pass out construction paper and notebook paper and have students create a research notebook. Tell them all information they collect will be kept here.

Time frame for lesson:

One class period, 45-50 minutes