Recently in History class we have been focusing on the Civil war. This particular unit we were investigating the different battles, the victors and the reasons for the victories. Our goal was to determine the ultimate victor of each theater of war: East, West, and Naval. We were also aiming to identify commonalities in the reasons for the results of the battles. To do this we set up a class scavenger hunt. Each person was given some information on a battle and then had to research further to find the date, the theater, and the location of their battles. Next we created a document on google docs that included all the facts we found. We then created a QR code and a bit.ly to put up somewhere around the school that our classmates would have to find and scan. When the document was accessed it would give a hint to where the next one was located, and we would advance to the next battle until we had all 20. My battle was the battle of Fort Henry, you can access my document here. The next day in class we created a padlet separated into the three theaters; West, East, and Naval.
In the padlet we discussed which region was the overall victor for each theater. Each student could post an entry in the column that corresponded to the theater they wanted, and they could then say who they thought the victor was with evidence from specific battles. The ultimate victor for the Western theater was the Union. First of all in many battles such as the battle of Vicksburg and the battle of Shiloh the Union clearly outnumbered the Confederacy. With more troops the Union was able to suppress the confederate forces. Also the Union had more manufacturing plants and transportation services, which supplied them with ammunition and other services. The Confederacy dominated in the Eastern theater for a couple reasons. For one, the union cut off some of the railroads and the confederacy could not get food or ammunition to confront the Union. The Union dominated in the Naval theater, because they had a more trained navy. Also in the case of the battle of Fort Henry the fort was on low land and was clearly exposed.
I thought that the Scavenger hunt was fun and helpful to learn. Walking around made it more exciting to find out about the battles and to complete the lesson. Analyzing the different overall victors on the class padlet with everyone's opinion was also helpful. I think that the scavenger hunt was a beneficial and fun activity.
