Curriculum
Reconstruction Unit Docs
Unit Guide, Unit Storyboard, Lesson Calendar; Brief Answers for Teachers
Reconstruction Lesson One
Unit Launch; The Freedman's Bureau (Q1)
Students review the unit storyboard and unit guide, and learn the story of the Freedman’s Bureau. They check their understanding by writing a four-sentence story.
Reconstruction Lesson Two
Presidential Reconstruction (Q1)
Students learn the story of President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, and check their understanding by writing “Because – But – So” Sentences.
Reconstruction Lesson Three
Mississippi's "Black Code" (Q2)
Students interpret an excerpt from Mississippi’s “Black Code” of 1865.
Reconstruction Lesson Four
Thaddeus Stevens Responds (Q2)
Students interpret excerpts from an 1865 speech on Reconstruction by radical Republican Representative Thaddeus Stevens.
Reconstruction Lesson Five
Radical Reconstruction (Q1)
Students learn the story of “Radical Reconstruction,” and tell the story back in a four-box storyboard.
Reconstruction Lesson Six
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (Q2)
Students interpret two of the “Reconstruction Amendments.”
Reconstruction Lesson Seven
White Southern Resistance (Q1)
Students learn the story of white Southern resistance to Reconstruction and the Southern Democrats return to power, and check their understanding by writing “Because – But – So” Sentences.
Reconstruction Lesson Eight
A Sharecropping Contract (Q2)
Students interpret excerpts from an 1870 sharecrop contract signed by formerly enslaved people in Alabama.
Reconstruction Lesson Nine
The Compromise of 1877 (Q1)
Students learn the story of the “Compromise of 1877” and check their understanding by writing a four-sentence story.
Reconstruction Lesson Ten
Explaining the Decision to Abandon Reconstruction (Q3)
Students study data to explain why the Republican Party abandoned Reconstruction in 1877. They then write a general hypothesis and test it on a new case: the Democratic Party’s decision to abandon Southern conservatives in the 1960s.
Reconstruction Lesson Eleven
Ending Reconstruction (Q4)
Students judge Hayes’ decision to remove Federal troops from the South in 1877. They then create a general principle and test it on a new case: the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.