The
Civil War through a Child's Eye
Visual Literacy (option one)
- Discuss the role of photography in capturing reality.
- Talk about Nathaniel Epp from Bull
Run who manipulated photographs.
- Complete the “Does
the Camera Ever Lie?” activity from the American Memory collection,
Selected
Civil War Photographs.
Visual Literacy (option two)
- Look
at photographs and daguerreotypes as primary source materials.
- Introduce format for analyzing photographs.
- Conduct a whole class activity of analyzing photographs.
- Working in pairs, students analyze selected photographs
using the Photo Analysis Guide.
- Debrief results of analyses with
entire class.
- Based
on the results, student pairs write a caption for their selected photograph.
- Students
share their selected photographs and captions in a gallery walk.
Other Ideas
- Read
historical fiction to explore causes and effects of the Civil War. See Resources
for list of fiction.
- Use
the KWL process to tap students’ prior knowledge (What I KNOW), identify research
topics for student-selected investigations (What I WANT to know), and assess
students’ learning (What I LEARNED).
- Compare
photographic images and book illustrations of children from the Civil War
Era. Use selections from the Michael
Lehman Williamson Collection of Civil War Books for Young People.
- Analyze
primary text and compare the results with students’ interpretations of photographic
images. Use selections from American
Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project or other
American Memory collections.
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