War of 1812 Through the Eyes of Children... and Primary Source Analysis Skills Too!

Although I am also a participant, I had to opportunity and honor of presenting a breakout workshop at this year's History Connected summer institute.  Since the focus of the institute this year is on the impact that American wars have had on American society, I reached back into my files from a few years ago when I taught U.S. history in 8th grade to find a webquest I created on the War of 1812.  Teachers got to "play student" and take part in a shortened version of the 4 day lesson.  Click the screen shot below to see the webquest website.

Here is a brief day by day guide of the primary sources and analysis skills that students use as they complete the 4 day webquest.

Day 1: Introduction to the Webquest and Madison's Declaration of War

Students choose to be either Eliza or Joshua.  Both are 14-year-olds living in the United States before and during the war.  

Then the students move on to reading Madison's war message explaining his reasons for asking Congress to declare war.  Since the lesson was written for heterogeneous classes of 8th graders, I needed to find a way to break down the speech into manageable parts. So, I put excerpts of the speech in a worksheet with missing words or phrases.  Students had to skim the speech for the excerpts to fill in the missing information and then answer guided questions that helped them understand the meaning of Madison's words.

After completing this analysis, students wrote a half page journal entry from the perspective of Eliza or Joshua reacting to the news and incorporating some of the reasons for war from the primary source into their writing.

Day 2: Old Ironsides - U.S.S. Constitution & the H.M.S. Guerriere

After reading some brief historical background on the importance of the battle between these two frigates early in the war, students read Oliver Wendell Holmes' peom Old Ironsides, which was actually written as a memorial several decades later.  Holmes remembers the reactions of his fellow Americans in his childhood during the actual war.  Reading 19th century poetry is daunting for 8th graders.  So this time, students are asked to choose one stanza and translate its meaning into their own words.  Then, as with Day 1, students write a half page journal entry from the perspective of either Eliza or Joshua reacting to the American victory and huge boost in morale.

Day 3: The Burning of Washington D.C.

On the third day students experience a big let down after the huge victory of the U.S.S. Constitution early in the war.  The British successfully blockaded the entire Atlantic coast, and then captured and burned the capital, Washington D.C.  This time students look at an engraving and political cartoon that were created at the time reacting to the events.  They also read First Lady Dolley Madison's letter to her sister expressing her fears as the British approached the city.  To understand the significance of the images, students are either asked to identify items in them or to recognize the mood of each image to interpret the reactions that people had at the time.  For Dolley Madison's letter, students once again scan for excerpt in order to complete them and then answer questions about them.  Finally, once again, they write a half page journal entry from the perspective of Eliza or Joshua reacting to the horrible news.

Day 4: Fort McHenry & the Star Spangled Banner

On the last day of the exercise students learn about the bombardment of Fort McHenry and the events that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the poem that would eventually become our national anthem.  Once again, 19th century poetry is not the most engaging content for 8th graders, so they are asked to choose one of the stanzas that we do not sing as part of the anthem song and put it into their own words.  It helps students to understand that although the bombardment caused major destruction, the fact that Americans held the fort served as an inspiration to carry on.  Students then write one last journal entry reacting once again.

Reflection

Hopefully, after completing the 4 day exercise, students will understand the variety of emotions that can be triggered by war.  Typically there is enthusiasm at the start when people believe in the cause.  Early victories, like the U.S.S. Constitution, can fuel that fire.  But devastating defeats, such as the burning of Washington, tend to give people a dose of the realities of war and they might even start questioning whether the war is worth the cost.  The activity gives students, who have never experienced wartime sacrifice, some empathy.  In order for students to truly understand, and hopefully remember, history they need to be able to relate to the people who lived it.  Hopefully, this activity gave them an opportunity to do just that.

Turning History Students into Detectives

How can I turn my history students into detectives?
One of the most valuable skills we can teach our history students is to use evidence from the past to develop their own opinions about historical events.  One popular program that many high schools use is the DBQ Project.  Students use textual and visual primary and secondary scholarly sources to answer a question.  For example, my sophomores recently had a class debate based in the evidence from the DBQ entitled "North or South: Who Killed Reconstruction?" Essentially, students use evidence from experts and first-hand witnesses to solve problems, just like a detective would.  The program has a fabulous reputation and student essays that result are well-thought-out and evidence-based.  Unfortunately, one small pitfall of the program is that it requires a lot of paper and not much technology.

Why not combine technology with historical evidence analysis?
I found a great website that enables student to do the same kind of analysis in a webquest style environment.  Surprisingly, students are more enthusiastic about the same tasks when they can simply use a computer instead of doing the writing out with pencil and paper.  Historical Scene Investigation puts famous dilemmas from history into "case files" and asks students to solve the mysteries.  Students analyze primary sources, similarly to the DBQ Project, but the entire task can be done online.

Recently, my freshmen were finishing up their unit on the causes of the American Revolution.  As a review of some of the events, we spent two class periods in the computer lab where they chose to work on one of two case files:

• The Boston "Massacre": Students read about the event, sifted through both American and British first-hand accounts, and decided whether justice was served at the trial where 6 of the 8 accused British regulars were acquitted.
• Lexington and Concord: After reading both American and British first-hand accounts, students had to decide the historical question: Who fired the first shot?  Was it the Minutemen or the British regulars?

How should I introduce the website and assignment?
To introduce the assignment, I also used technology.  I used the SMART Recorder program, part of the SMART Technologies suite of software that comes with my SMART Board, to create an instructional video.  Students watched it in class, and, if they ever got confused during the process of completing the work in class or at home, they could reference the video anytime since it was posted on our class website.

What kinds of documents did students work with?

Then it was time to get down to work.  Students worked hard in class analyzing great sources like:

• Paul Revere's famous engraving that started the use of the term "massacre" to describe the event, The bloody massacre perpetrated on King Street

• The chromolithograph by John Bufford that dramatized the death of Crispus Attucks: Boston Massacre, Mar. 5, 1770.

• Entry for April 19th 1775, from the diary of British Lieutenant John Barker swearing that the American provincials fired first at Concord: "...a number of people, I believe between 200 and 300, formed in a common in the middle of town; we still continued advancing, keeping prepared against an attack through without intending to attack them; but on our coming near them they fired on us two shots, upon which our men without any orders, rushed upon them, fired and put them to flight; several of them were killed..."
• And of course a conflicting sworn account from 34 minutemen who reported that the British regulars fired first: "...at which time, the company began to disperse, whilst our backs were turned on the troops, we were fired on by them, and a number of our men were instantly killed and wounded, not a gun was fired by any person in our company on the regulars to our knowledge before they fired on us, and continued firing until we had all made our escape..."

So, how did the students do?

Well, when it came to the question over whether justice was served in the trial that followed the Boston Massacre, one student contended:

In Document D, created by John Bufford, it shows colonists are attacking, while others are getting slaughtered by the soldiers' guns.  In Document E by Alonzo Chapel, it shows colonists holding weapons attacking the soldiers.  In Paul Revere's depiction, it shows innocent colonists being brutally killed.  I believe that the colonists were not innocent.  They did somewhat attack the soldiers.  But shooting the colonists was not justified.  I believe that justice was not served.  How can branding someone's thumb be a justified exchange for someone's life?  All of the soldiers should have been put in jail and branded because they killed a group of people over a small conflict that could have been solved a different way.

In the case of Lexington and Concord, one student argued that the American rebels must have fired the first shot because:

The British had well disciplined soldiers who would not fire without an order.  This is clear as one British soldier commented on their intent not to fire and said, "we still continue advancing, keeping prepared against an attack though without attacking them."  This line clearly represents how the British did not want to fire on the Patriots.

It was satisfying for me, as their teacher, to read that these 14 and 15 year old students were combining their own opinions and reasoning skills with evidence from the past. Their number grade was based on a rubric I developed according to the assignment description and class standards we have developed throughout the school year.  Overall, however, I think they did pretty well, don't you?

Teaching Historical Context With Primary Sources & Podcasting

The Philosophy Behind the Lesson
Now that the second half of the school year is well-underway, I am becoming more and more cognizant of the fact that I need to teach my freshman students certain skills to prepare them for the larger-scale research projects that await them in their sophomore classes next year.

One of those skills is historical context.

Professor Claude Bélanger at Marianopolis College describes historical context as:

The context is understood as the events, or the climate of opinion, that surround the issue at hand. They help to understand its urgency, its importance, its shape. What was happening at the time of the event or the decision that sheds some light on it? In what type of society did the event occur? An urban one? A rich one? An educated one?

The Lesson
I wanted to come up with a fun way to teach my freshmen this concept.  So, I opened the class with an explanation of historical context.  We happen to be studying American colonial society prior to the American revolution.  So, the two issues I chose to highlight were the Great Awakening and colonial westward expansion into Native American lands.

Each group received one primary source quote or excerpt to analyze.  They did some pre-reading the night before, and now they had to apply that knowledge and set up the historical context to explain how people of the time might feel and why they might make the statements assigned to them.

Click here to see the handout they received.

They had the first half of class to do their research and writing, and then we recorded their results in a podcast during the second half of class.  Groups sent two representatives up to my desk, and they recorded there using a simple headset with microphone and my AudioExpert.com account. (Audio expert is something covered and demonstrated in an earlier History Connected Seminar this year.)

I published the podcasts before the kids even left the classroom using my PodBean.com account.  PodBean is easy to use.  If you know how to write a blog using Blogger or WordPress, PodBean is relatively intuitive.

Here are the podcasts that resulted:
D Block Podcast

Podcast Powered By Podbean

C Block Podcast

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Finally, to follow up on the lesson and ensure that everyone got the historical context for all of the quotes, students were assigned to go online and listen to the podcast one more time for homework. They were to take notes on the historical context explained by each of the other three groups on their handout from class.

Reflecting on the Results
The students really liked this lesson because... 

• It reinforced and reviewed the reading and outline work they had done the night before.
• They got to work in groups and talk to each other throughout the class (it was a student-centered activity). 
• They love publishing podcasts online.  Fourteen and fifteen-year-olds love to hear their own voices! 
• Also, I often send emails home informing parents when we publish podcasts or videos from class.  Parents love hearing what their children are learning directly from their mouths and in their own words.

I really liked this lesson because...

• It was quick, one 55 minute class period.
• The kids were engaged and motivated the entire time they were in class.
• The work they are doing is applying the knowledge they have already learned.  It isn't about spitting back information they memorized, it is about higher order thinking. 
• Also, I tend to get a lot of feedback, from both parents and students, when our lessons result in something we publish.  Parents email me and comment on the actual podcast.  I can also see how many "hits" each podcast gets right on the PodBean site, so I know that students are going back and listening.