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ActiveHistory provides entertaining, educational award-winning interactive simulations, decision-making games, self-marking quizzes, high-quality worksheets and detailed lesson plans for teachers and students. View the top 75 activities here.
Fakebook Project - Key Figures of the American Civil War In preparation for the roleplay strategy game that follows, each student needs to take on the role of one key politician or soldier from the Civil War and research their life and career and present their findings through a 'Fakebook' profile. In this way they will be able to act in role much more effectively during the game and maximise the chance of their side being victorious. Here are some examples by students from the International School of Toulouse.
The next part of the unit is taught purely through strategy games! Students take on the roles of different politicians and generals and through a series of 'moves' based around 'decision points' they quickly develop a deep understanding of the people, places, events, themes, campaigns and battles of the war.
Mission A: People and Places In this first stage of the simulation, students are divided into "Union" and "Confederate" teams and learn more about the key figures involved in the war. They can then use this to formulate a strategy for winning the simulation - which consists of various armies deciding how best to increase their strength and moving around a map trying to capture their enemies' capital city. A great way to get the class aware of the people and places involved. The Teacher Notes for this first stage of the game are important to have to hand.
For the strategy game, here is an interactive version of the Battle Map that you can save at the end of each lesson over the duration of the unit.
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Click here for full screen version
Mission C: Campaigns and Battles In this final stage of the game-based unit, students take the role of an advisor to either President Davis, or President Lincoln. They will be given a series of military, economic and political problems to deal with. Their first objective is to choose the course of action which they think their President took in real life (his 'approval rating' of you will then stay high). Their second objective is to correctly answer the factual questions they are given as the game proceeds (your 'factual knowledge' score will then stay high). As they proceed through the simulation, students complete the worksheet. At the end of the game there will be follow-up tasks. Students can play as a Confederate, a Unionist, or even against another player!
QR Code Treasure Hunt: The Events of the American Civil War Print off these 20 QR codes and put them up around your classroom / school. Students have to answer as many questions as they can in the time available. The completed answers can be used to develop their individual research project stemming from the interactive simulation (above).
What can we learn from the songs of the Civil War? In this activity, students analyse the lyrics (and, if possible, listen to the music) of popular Confederate and Unionist songs from the civil war. They then have to produce their own civil war song to a civil-war era tune of their choice. Their objective is to produce a song which clearly explains the causes of the war. Finally, they look at the legacy of the civil war on American popular music, using examples from The Band, Elvis Presley, Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Interactive Quizzes from www.classtools.net
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Births (150 years ago today): 1871 – Rosa Luxemburg, Polish-Russian economist and philosopher (d. 1919)
Births (100 years ago today): 1921 – Elmer Valo, American baseball player and coach (d. 1998)
Births (50 years ago today): 1971 – Greg Berry, English footballer and coach
Deaths (50 years ago today): 1971 – Allan Nevins, American journalist and author (b. 1890)
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