Civil War Unit - Culminating Project

Forgotten Voices: Children of the Civil War is our students final project. Done in collaboration with their classroom, our students were first introduced to the daguerrotype from the American Memory collection at the Library of Congress. They learned of the impact this new technology had on the fighting of the Civil War, and then each student was asked to select a real daguerreotype of a child from that period, and research the causes and the history of the Civil War, with a particular aim of understanding the impact this war had both on the country, and on the children who grew up during the war.

After having read several historical non-fiction and accounts of the Civil War, the students created a "diary" entry for their selected child. Their assignment was to write a fictional diary entry, using historically accurate details, to describe one day in the life of a child living through the war. They had to meet 5 criteria through their writing, and once completed, they learned through the Word program how to insert a picture and "age" the background for verisimilitude.

Finally, each student was asked to edit their diary entry to two or three sentences that was then turned into a pseudo-documentary film project.

Through this project, our students used all of their big6 research skills, from researching, note taking, and presentation, and coupled them with creative writing and editing skills, while learning about the Civil War and a little about the history of early technologies, as well as being introduced to the terrific resources provided through our Library of Congress.