This Week in US History

This week we are continuing our study of Progressive Reform Movements. Just like last week, we will explore how specific reformers addressed the problems that we originally uncovered in our Gilded Age Unit.

Monday - We will learn more about the fight for women's suffrage, focusing on the story of Alice Paul with a reading and video clips from "Iron Jawed Angels." Students will then complete an Empathy Map to showcase what they learned. More on this technique can be found with a subscription to EMC2Learning. Finally, students will end class by adding details to their Sketch Notes. 

Tuesday and Wednesday - We will spend two days exploring life for African Americans, starting with a timeline connecting the issues at the turn of the century to those of the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. While those are technically topics that students should have covered in eighth grade, the last two years have been such a mess that I feel the need to review the information before we move forward in our studies. Next, students will use a Cyber Sandwich (Learn morehere.) to compare the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Notice that I chose to have students record their notes in the Pear Deck we have been using throughout this lesson. They will then use a paper and pencil handout to compare and contrast what they learned with a partner. Finally, students will end class by adding details to their Sketch Notes. 

Thursday and Friday - Students will wrap up this section by creating an Action Figure (Learn more here.) to highlight the achievements of one person important to the history of the Progressive Era. They will start by answering a series of questions about their person of choice in order to complete the biography section of their templates. Next, they will add images and details to complete their figures.

Students will also practice the vocabulary words essential to this section with the Fast and Curious protocol (Learn morehere.). Our goal is to complete this process three more times this week, improving our class averages each time. So far, students have really enjoyed this and have been very excited to watch their scores go up. 

Notice that we are not using the Nocratic Seminar slides (Learn more about this technique with a subscription to EMC2Learning.). While I am excited to try out the technique, we just didn't have time to include them in these lessons. Look for it to show up in later units.