Lesson Plan Overview
For teachers, I have included two lesson plan ideas and one formative assessment project to help students investigate President Lincoln's motives in drafting the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863). All of the materials you need are on this site or are accessible via links. I have provided tinyurl links to the Google Docs for each lesson plan and to the related handouts for each lesson.
These lessons have been designed for my five sections of 11th grade AP U.S. History; however, feel free to adapt them for your own classroom use. My classes meet daily for 50 minute periods. My classroom environment is discussion and skills-based; I am not a big lecturer, rather I provide time each Monday to allow students to ask questions or challenge ideas, which often guides the focus of lessons for that week. Technologically, each class is 1:1 with devices--a majority bring their own laptops, Mac books, iPads, etc., and a minority borrow school-owned Chrome Books for use during the entire school year. Overall, I strive to be flexible, so students may use their smart phones for many lessons, and I make paper copies available for those students who prefer or need them. However, my classes are nearly paperless, and I use Google Classroom for my school website, where students can access and submit all reading assignments, class activities, rubrics, etc.
The first lesson provides an instructor demonstration of close reading skills using the Emancipation Proclamation. Students are also tasked with additional practice on the Short Answer Question (SAQ)-style assessment by contrasting two secondary sources. The second lesson challenges students to critically analyze excerpts from five Lincoln primary sources to determine his motives for drafting the Emancipation Proclamation. The activity's prompts should help students address Historical context, Audience, Purpose, Point of View, and Significance or the Why? of each source (HAPPY), useful for the exam's Document Based Question (DBQ). Finally, the third lesson, or formative assessment, allows students, working alone or in pairs, to create a careful close reading of one Lincoln source of their choosing from the House Divided research engine at Dickinson College to address Lincoln's real motivations for drafting the Emancipation Proclamation.
These lessons have been designed for my five sections of 11th grade AP U.S. History; however, feel free to adapt them for your own classroom use. My classes meet daily for 50 minute periods. My classroom environment is discussion and skills-based; I am not a big lecturer, rather I provide time each Monday to allow students to ask questions or challenge ideas, which often guides the focus of lessons for that week. Technologically, each class is 1:1 with devices--a majority bring their own laptops, Mac books, iPads, etc., and a minority borrow school-owned Chrome Books for use during the entire school year. Overall, I strive to be flexible, so students may use their smart phones for many lessons, and I make paper copies available for those students who prefer or need them. However, my classes are nearly paperless, and I use Google Classroom for my school website, where students can access and submit all reading assignments, class activities, rubrics, etc.
The first lesson provides an instructor demonstration of close reading skills using the Emancipation Proclamation. Students are also tasked with additional practice on the Short Answer Question (SAQ)-style assessment by contrasting two secondary sources. The second lesson challenges students to critically analyze excerpts from five Lincoln primary sources to determine his motives for drafting the Emancipation Proclamation. The activity's prompts should help students address Historical context, Audience, Purpose, Point of View, and Significance or the Why? of each source (HAPPY), useful for the exam's Document Based Question (DBQ). Finally, the third lesson, or formative assessment, allows students, working alone or in pairs, to create a careful close reading of one Lincoln source of their choosing from the House Divided research engine at Dickinson College to address Lincoln's real motivations for drafting the Emancipation Proclamation.