Overview+and+Student+Audience

=**Overview of Units:**=

The focus for both units is The Civil War. In the 8th grade classroom, students will focus on slave life during that time period and in the high school classroom, students will investigate the causes of The Civil War in the pre-war sentiments of two specific communities in the United States. The majority of the exploration work will take place on two different archive databases online. The 8th grade social studies class will be exploring the Library of Congress archive, [|Born into Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938]. The high school students will be exploring [|The Valley of the Shadows], an archive of diaries, letters, photos, and newspaper articles from two different communities in the Civil War complied by the University of Virginia. ). The purpose of the lessons and unit for the 8th grade students is to get the slave perspective and understand what life was like for them during this time period. Students will ultimately be creating an interview similar to what they read on the Library of Congress website incorporating perspectives on specific topics such as daily life, education, treatment, etc. The high school students will be looking at the root causes of The Civil War. The Valley of the Shadows website provides primary sources from two different counties, one situated in the North and the other in the South. Based on the prospective provided in the newspaper articles in the archives, students will have a debate over the major topics of controversy concerning what caused the Civil War. Over the course of both of these projects, students will be addressing these specific information skills:

//Specific skills within that standard://
 * Standard 2: Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge.**
 * 2.1.4 Use technology and other information tools to analyze and organize information
 * 2.1.5 Collaborate with others to exchange ideas, develop new understandings, make decisions and solve problems..
 * 2.1.6 Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings

=Student Audience:= The audiences for my two lessons will be an 8th grade social studies class studying U.S. History and a high school junior class studying U.S. History.


 * 8th grade social studies class:** I’ve decided to stick with what I know when comes to the make-up of the students these lessons will be implemented for, therefore the student population is similar to what I currently teach at Creston Middle School in Warren Township. For the middle school setting the school houses 7th and 8th grade students, 300 of those students are enrolled in the 8th grade. About 64% of those students are African American and 25% are White. 11% of the population is made up of other ethnicities. Average class size is about 25 students in an 8th grade social studies class. Of the total school population, about 53% of the students are on free or reduced lunch. Students will have some practice with research and inquiry skills as they enter the 8th grade. They are able to recognize when information is needed and the majority of students will have the capacity to know how to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively for a specific task, but a high-level of teacher aid will be needed to guide students throughout the unit. Students generally have a high-interest level in matters related their culture or heritage and the use of technology is always helpful in maintaining interest in a specific topic or project.


 * Junior U.S. History class:** The high school as a whole is very large with approximately 3,800 students with a little over 1,000 students in the 10th grade. For the entire high school about 38% of the student population is White and about 50% is African American. About 8% of the population is made up of other races. Approximately 45% of those students are on free or reduced lunch. Average class size is approximately 30 students which is large. At this point in their schooing, students should be proficient at inquiry based learning and are fairly adept at information literacy. Since U.S. history is not a required course, it assumed that the students in class have a genuine interest in the subject matter so topics explored can be explored in depth. Again, the incorporation of technology will aid in keeping student interest as they explore new topics within the scope of U.S. History.