The Civil War era was one of the most difficult and critical periods for the United States. These activities are presented together to provide students an opportunity through a Jeopardy game to consider questions about the Civil War, an opportunity through given websites to research information about the Civil War and use of the Jeopardy game again at the end to review or assess basic information about the Civil War.
Civil War Jeopardy
View this game with your entire class. As students choose categories and questions give them the opportunity to answer them. If they don't know it (as most won't since it is the beginning of the study) assign that question to one student for research. Do this with all questions in the game. You may assign one question to multiple students. Once you have worked through the entire game, students will have questions to guide their research. You may wish to add others as well. You may want to record the number of correct answers your class gave. At the end of the study when you view it again you can again record the number of correct answers to demonstrate their learning and mastery of the material.
Civil War Websites
These websites will lead students to specific information about the Civil War. You could do this in lab time having each student research his/her questions. In a One Computer Classroom you could have students rotate through the computer over the period of a few days to a week to locate their answers.
You will need to be having class discussions about the material students find. Allow students to share the answers to their questions with the class. Each student may be required to plan a 5 minute mini-lesson to report the information he has learned.
Civil War Jeopardy
This is the exact same game as you used before. Use it again with your class to demonstrate how much information they have learned over the course of the study.
If you want to personalize this game you can have students come up with their own questions and re-create the game for use at the end of the study.
