Back to top

1. The students will construct a poltical cartoon that shows the positive or negative effects of Reconstruction.
   
   
2. Students will write a historical journal entry as a freedmen during the 1870's.
   

Back to top

You are a freedmen living in the South during the 1870's. You are faced with the issue of social inequality and the struggle to survive. You must try to do all that you can to become self-sufficient while dealing with prejudice. Now you have completed the journey of living on your own without a slave master. Write a journal entry describing the positive and negative effects of Reconstruction on your life.

Back to top

20-60-20 Teaching Model

Segment One: Mini-Lesson - Estimated Time: 20% of allocated time

During this segment of the lesson:

1. Today we will look at the period after the Civil War. Look at the political cartoon on page 61 in Promise to America. Answer these questions through accountable talk.
   1. What was the truth Jefferson called self-evident?
      
   2. What is happening in the cartooon? Who's on the bench? What abilities did the racers have to complete the race?
      Theme: Many of the people on the bench are left out from America. Not given the opportunities to achieve. Racism and other isses don't allow them to compete in the race.
      Equality treatment, opportunity and rewards. (Equality depends on perception)
      
2. Survey students on whether they have experienced inequality. What can cause unequal treatment? Race, sex, handicapping conditions.
   
3. Today are there incidents that have taken place in the news that demonstrate racisim or inequality?
   

Technology for this segment: None
Materials for this segment: Texts- Call to Freedom, Promise of America (Larry Cuban)
Student product or performance for this segment: none
Scoring tool for this segment: Teacher orally asseses student understanding about the effects of racism and inequality.

Segment Two: Practice - Estimated Time: 60% of allocated time

During this segment of the lesson:

Students will work in groups to examine the political, social, and economic effects of Reconstruction.

Group I:

1. Problems our nation faced after the Civil War
   A.
   B.
   C.
   D.
   
2. Freedmen's Bureau- Explain what it did?
   
   
3. Radical REpublicans wanted to remove President Johnson because:
   
4. Scalawags-
   
5. Carpetbaggers-
   
6. Positive efffects of Reconstruction
   a.
   b.
   
7. Negative effects of Reconstruction
   a.
   b.
   

Group II:

1. Effects of Reconstruction on Blacks
   Family:
   Education:
   Politics:
   Politics:
   Sharecropping:
   
   Explain how sharecropping continues the cycle of poverty.
   
   Federal government promised free blacks __________________________________.
   

Group III:
Social inequality - List 4 major requirements for southern states to become readmitted to the union.

1. Students will work in groups to answer the questions. Monitor students working in the class and ask questions to mske sure groups stay focused.
   
2. Each group has enough questions for student to answer one item for the group.
   
3. It will be important for students to take notes from an overhead highlighting key points from each group. Each group will have one or two items placed on transparency to present to the class.
   
4. Accountable talk will be used to cover key concepts that categorize impact of the Reconstruction era on individuals and groups.
   
5. After each group has presented, the class is directed to place items into categoriies (Political, social, economic)
   Freedmen's Bureau, 13,14,15th amendment, sharecropping, Carpetbaggers, KKK, solicit other items from the class and categorize. Students must justify why the item is placed under a specific category. Note this might lead to accountable talk because an item may fit more than one category.
   
6. Each student designs a poltical cartoon based on information from the group activity. Teacher's option to take it from the group assigned or total information presented. Cartoons will be presented during the next lesson.
   

Prior to this lesson teacher has reviewed steps to analyze a poltical cartoon.

Key Pointers- Analysis of Political Cartoons

1. Identify chaaracters, symbols, and objects in cartoon.
   
2. Look for clues details that will give further meaning.
   
3. Read captions to identify main idea.
   
4. Identify any bias the cartoonist may have.
   

Editorial Cartoon

1. What event inspired this cartoon?
   
2. Are there any real people in cartoon? who is portrayed in the cartoon?
   
3. Identy symbols in the cartoon? what are they and what do they represent?
   
4. What is this cartoonist's opinion about the topic potrayed in the cartoon?
   
5. Do you agree or disagree with the cartoonist's opinion? Why?

Note: This lesson continues into the next day at this point.
Students can work on political cartoons at home and be prepared to present cartoons in class. See student created cartoon rubric.

Requirements for Political Cartoon
Design a political cartoon that explains a positive or negative effect of Reconstruction.

• Include real people or symbols
  
• Captions
  
• Creative
  
• Legible
• Comprehends concept(s)
  

This helps to set the stage for industrialization of America.

Technology for this segment: Overhead
Materials for this segment: Call to Freedom, Promise of America: Breaking and Building, ditto paper for poltical cartoons, crayons and markers.
Student product or performance for this segment: Draw a political cartoon that shows a positive or negative effect of Reconstruction.
Scoring tool for this segment: (Optional) Rubric for product - Cartoon based upon creativity, visual presentation, and concept comprehension. Cartoon should include title, caption, symbol or pictures. On the back student can write a brief summary about their cartoon.

Segment Three: Feedback - Estimated Time 20% of allocated time

BCR - Write a diary entry as a new freedmen living in the south during Reconstruction. Describe the issues and treatment recceived during this era in American History. Reflect upon the how the struggle to live had positive and negative effects on your life.

Technology for this segment: None
Materials for this segment: None
Student product or performance for this segment: BCR
Scoring tool for this segment: Social Studies Rubric

Back to top

Maryland High School Social Studies Rubric: Goal One

LEVEL 4
This response shows an understanding of the historical development and/or current status of principles, institutions, or processes of political systems. The response is insightful, integrates knowledge and demonstrates powerful application.

LEVEL 3
This response shows some understanding of the historical development and/or current status of principles, institutions or processes of political systems. The response is thorough with accurate documentation. Appropriate application demonstrates some evidence of higher order thinking skills.

LEVEL 2
This response shows knowledge of the historical development and/or current status of principles, institutions, or processes of political systems. The response is acceptable with some support or key ideas. The response shows little or no evidence of application.

LEVEL 1
This response shows minimal knowledge of the historical development and/or current status of principles, institutions, or processes of political systems. The response is related to the question but is inadequate, with significant misconceptions and/or absence of key ideas.

LEVEL 0
The response is completely incorrect or irrelevant. There may be no response.

Back to top

Organize: Please note that there were two assessments used in this lesson. The tables below displays above and below proficient levels on the political carton design and anlysis. See Rubric.

• Number of students who performed at or above the proficient level on my scoring tool;
  70 is proficient - 84%
  
• Number of students who performed below the proficient level on my scoring tool;16%

Assessment II BCR- Diary entry- Total students 23

• 4 - 9
  
• 3 - 7
  
• 2 - 5
  
• 1 - 2
  
  
• Percentage of students at or above proficient level on my scoring tool: 69.5
  
• Percentage of students below proficient level-1&2 category- 30.4%
  

Analyze: I will examine the data in the chart to look for trends, contributing factors, and implications of student performance over a series of assessments of the same learning standard.

Contributing factors:
This was an ambitious lesson because it required students to analyze,design ,and synthesize information in the form of a cartoon as well as write a brief constructed response. This lesson took several days to complete. It is important that students are introduced to political cartoon analysis skills. Emphasis on state mandated tests include BCR's and cartoon anaylsis. Preparing students to construct and explain their original cartoon helps them to develop higher order thinking skills. There were students who were absent for one or both segments of the lesson. Absenteeism does play a role in effective results.

Implications for student performance:
Students are given an opportunity to visually explain concepts before they write the information in a BCR. Students had a chance to justify how they perceived a historical events based on the design of their political cartoon. Students were able to use the research from within each group to draw insight into the various positive and negative aspects of the Reconstruction era. These activities helped to make history come alive because it places the student in the driver's seat. They had to interact with the facts to draw a conclusion. The conclusions helped students to understand the plight of African Americans during Reconstruction.

Reflect: As I look at my practice, I see that students appeared to gain insight about the historical period when asked to draw a political cartoon. Using a visual presentation to foster understanding of a concept helped many to gain skills needed to interpret cartoons. How do you read between the lines? An author may use this as a means to get you to think about a topic and discuss it in greater detail. During this lesson students asked questions that led to inquiry about what happeed? How did we go from gaining right to vote found in the Constitution to denying political rights? In the future I must allow students more time to debate critical issues and find a way to make students stakeholders of their own knowledge. I must try to make students see the importance of doing each assignment and connect it to a real world experience. In reading some of the BCR's, some of my students were very insightful in the manner in which they captured the emotional and immediate needs of freedmen during this period. I must take the time to show/display the difference between 4's and 2's on BCR's. Students need to see and read the content of each BCR. There is still a great need to improve writing in the content area.

I was surprised that students who received two's on the BCR's for the most part obtained that grade for writing deficiencies. Students showed some understanding of the plight of freedmen but were not able to give greater detail to support an idea. I assumed that students knew how to support an idea with supportive details. Students did much better on creating political cartoons than the BCR's. BCR's are not new to ninth graders and I thought that they would be able to transfer information from the cartoon into their BCR's better. It is possible that my standards are higher than most and my two's are close to becoming three's with some specfic changes in writing.

What was valuable in this lesson was the to see students begin to develop higher order thinking skills through designing political cartoons. Students were on task when it came to the segment of the lesson to justify terms in a particular category. (Political, social,economic) I must find a way to incorporate a more menaingful accountable talk segment, which will truly allow students time to interject their opinions.

Personally, this plan evaluated several components that are key to future high stakes testing and requires specfic task oriented activities for implementation

Summarize: I will continue to use the school initiatives to foster academic achievement in my classes by placing emphasis on data-driven lesson planning. By incorporating activities that reinforce writing for various purposes within a historical context to improve scores on high stakes tests mandated by the state. Lessons that connect real world experiences to concepts found within the course of study is key to helping studnets see the bigger picture.

Action Plan: I will complete the following TaskBuilder Figure 8 Strategy Action Plan to prepare for my next standards-based task.

1. Plan - Restructuring America

Title: Westward Expansion

Content Area: United States History

Learning Standard(s):1.2.4-

Intent: Create a commerical advertisement to either encourage or discourage settlers to move into the Great Plains or Oregon Territory.

2. Teach - I will teach the standards-based instruction task or administer the
assessment task identified in Number 1 on the following date:

Target date for teaching or assessing: March 14,2006

3. Check - I will score the standards-based instruction or assessment task identified in Number 2 and collect samples of student work for each score pointon the following date:

4. Target date for scoring: March 15,2006