Final Project Proposal

My final project will be based on the 5th grade Standard: 6, Objective: 3, which states: Analyze the significant social and political movements of the United States from the Civil War to 1900.
* Trace the development of social and political movements; e.g., abolition, child labor, immigration, labor unions.
* Identify leaders of the social and political movements.

Introduction: The civil war was a time that divided our country, people on both sides believed what they did was right. What was it like to be a slave during this difficult time? Did many slaves runaway? Who helped them and why? What about the slave owners? Did they actually believe what they were doing was right? These are the questions we will answer in this great adventure!

Task: Your task as a group will be to investigate your given person or group of people. You will learn all you can about what it was like to be that person during the civil war era and why they believed so strongly in what they were doing. You will be writing about them in a report, making a poster about them and at the end you will present your side of the story to the class, justifying your actions during this time period.

Process:
The students will be placed into groups of 5, each member having a particular assignment (scribe for the report, artist for the poster, 2 investigators in charge of investigation, and a leader for the presentation). Each group will be assigned their own task which will be to trace the history and background of one of the following-
1. A slave owner
2. A slave
3. A runaway slave
4. Harriet Tubman
5. A person helping runaway slaves through the underground railroad.
Each group will be guided through websites, learning about the geographic and social issues surrounding slavery and how it led to the civil war. They will also be assigned maps to fill out, and reports and posters to create. They will work together in their groups, and then when they have finished, they will present their findings to the class, explaining to the class their particular historical point of view and why they did what they did.

Resources: websites: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/tl.html, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/index.html, the pioneer website and more. We will have links to handouts of maps of the U.S. to show which states were slave states and which weren't. We will also have some early colony maps to show that slavery was a part of our history from the start of our nation. We will use poster boards, markers and pictures to make the posters. They will need access to the computer and encyclopedias either online from pioneer website or from the library. We will also use some costumes to help tell their stories at the end.

Evaluation: The reports (graded on content, punctuation and spelling), posters (graded on layout, pictures and general content), maps (are the slave states colored in?) and final presentations (How much effort did they put into it? How creative were they?) will be the assessment for this project. I will have rubrics to show the details of what is required.

Conclusion- Who was right? The slave owners? Or those who helped the slaves escape? We are about to find out! After all of our hard work, we are going to hear both sides of the story! Presentations- Using their creativity, students will show their posters, and share why their person was justified in their actions during the civil war (dressing up and acting out the part of their person is one way they could be creative).

Description of implementation strategy: Described through out the documents such as, working in groups of 5, each having an assigned task. Then collaborating and investigating their person. They will also present their material to the class as a group. Web Quest will be the tool the students use to guide them through this series of assignments and activities. This will take 2 weeks (30 minute lessons each day) for them to complete.

Description of setting: We will complete this in our class, we have 5 computers in our classroom which will be perfect for this project since they are working in 5 groups of 5. They will also work together at their desks in groups. We will also visit the library during one of our lessons in order to investigate further.