The Day C Block Was Set Free

What do you call a class of high schoolers roaming from floor to floor in a race for who can copy and paste the fastest? A #gallagherhistory scavenger hunt.

The week commenced with each student, or in my case a pair of students, picking a specific battle of the civil war to research. We chose from a list of descriptions and used the information given to find the battle. I picked the Battle of Fort Sumter. My partner and I set up a Google doc in which we typed up the following:

- Name of battle

- Place of battle

- Date

- Victor

- Theater (East, West, or Naval)

- Main reason(s) for results

Battle of Fort Sumter.
This is the picture featured for our battle.

The final bullet took some analyzing. We had to research the outcome of the battle and consider the state of both sides and the effect these had on the results. In the end, we complied all of this information in our Google doc and added a picture along with citations. 

We then created a new document which we would post up somewhere in the school. We inserted a QR code (made using the QR Reader app) that would link to our Google doc. But, because the QR readers and BYOD are fussy, we also added a shortened URL to our doc. We used bit.ly to customize the link and make it easier for our classmates to type in. Our finished document looked something like this. 

Once the documents were posted around school it was time to roam. We went from stop to stop taking down the information about each battle in our Evernote. Back into the classroom and it's time to analyze our findings. We set up a Padlet with three categories: East, West, and Naval. Each student individually chose a category and stated which side (confederate or union) he thought dominated in that theater. Within these results we found that the Union was the clear victor in the West and Naval theaters, but the East theater lead to a little controversy. We discussed the change that occurred in this theater. At the beginning of the Civil War, due to the Union's lack of military leadership, the Confederate side dominated. Once the Union established stronger leadership, they became the dominating theater. And once this occurred, the Union was in the lead of all three theaters-- a shoe-in for the victors of the war.