Civil War Tribune

This lesson focuses on student creativity along with the writing process. Art is also incorporated in a unique way. Students will use their research skills to complete a creative writing project on the Civil War.

A lesson plan for grade 5 English Language Arts and Social Studies

By Aimee Adkins

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Related topics

• Learn more about American history, Civil War, creative writing, first person, history, language arts, newspaper articles, newspapers, photograph analysis, social studies, and writing.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• research the photo from the Civil War.
• write a newspaper article based on the photo.
• Students will collaborate in small groups to create a newspaper layout for their articles and artwork to be displayed.

Teacher planning

You may wish to collaborate with your school’s librarian to find resources necessary for this lesson.

Time required for lesson

Three Days

Materials/resources

• Photographs of historical individuals, battles, or particular issues from the Civil War Era.
• Index cards (two or three per student)
• Art supplies
• Sample articles from Civil War time period about actual events
• Current newspaper articles for student to refer to such as eyewitness accounts or obituaries
• Poster board or large white sheets of paper
• Sentence strips

Technology resources

• Computer lab or individual student computers
• PowerPoint (optional)

Pre-activities

Students will view newspaper replicas of articles / newspapers from Civil War Era and find information specific to their research.

Prior knowledge

This is a culminating project for a Civil War unit.

Activities

1. Have each student choose their picture and research the photo to find facts to include in their creative writing activity.
2. Have the students enhance their photo in order to make the photo come to life.
3. Place students in groups and give each group a large poster and a large sentence strip. Have students work together to create a title for their newspaper (e.g.,”Civil War Times,” “Gettysburg Tribune,” “The Dixie Landmark”) Have the students write the title the group chooses on the sentence strip and tapes it to the top of the poster depicting a headline.
4. Direct students to write a newspaper article about their photograph. You may choose to differentiate the assignments to meet a variety of needs.
   • Research report using expository or narrative style.
   • A descriptive eyewitness account of an event or an event involving an historical person.
   • Writing an eyewitness account from a variety of perspectives such as from an animal or an item involved in the event (guns, cannons, or homes).
   • Writing an obituary or wanted type article for the newspaper.
5. As students complete rough their drafts, conference with students to proof the articles.
6. Have students write a final draft by writing on vertical index cards to create a newspaper column.
7. Students then place their article and photograph on the poster to display to the class.
8. You may wish to take the final draft process a step further by having the students create a PowerPoint presentations with each students article being one slide.

Assessment

Students can be evaluated in variety of ways:

• Completion of enhancement of photograph
• Accuracy of the written account.
• Students’ ability to write a first person eyewitness account.
• Students’ ability to use written language and follow rules of grammar and spelling.

Supplemental information

Old Social Studies textbooks are marvelous resources for photos and for basic information for students to research. Websites offer some quick references and unique information for you and your students to draw from. Also, when students are doing the art project, the point of the activity is for the student to get involved in the picture and what is happening. The students are trying to make the photo come to life, in a sense. Students, under no circumstances, should be allowed to turn images into comical depictions or be disrespectful in their art. It is a good idea to do a few to have handy as examples. As students are beginning, I always find a few students who have the idea and use theirs as examples for others to look at.