Searching for Battles

  This week, my class took part in a activity that taught us about the battles that were fought during the Civil War. Each person in my class was given a battle that we were responsible for making a Google doc for. Everyone's Google doc had to consist of four items; the title of the battle, the victor, the theater, and two bullet points describing the battle. The "theater" simply means where the battle took place; either the eastern theater, western theater, or naval theater (involving any body of water). Once we had all our information gathered, we created QR codes using a qr generator so everyone could access the Google docs. The QR codes were printed out and placed in various spots around the school. Our task was to get the information from each Google doc and paste it on to our Evernote page. At the bottom of each Google doc was a clue as to where the next QR code would be. Once we had all the information from the 20 battles gathered, we came together as a class and created a Padlet on the patterns we found while taking notes of the battles. My classes Padlet can be seen below. 

Created with Padlet

    The essential question of the week was, "Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war; East, West, or Naval?", and "What are some commonalities you can identify in the reason for the result of battles?" As you can see on the class Padlet, the Union dominated most of the western theater and naval theater while the eastern theater was primarily dominated by the Confederacy.For example, the Confederates were able to dominate the eastern theater because they were well supplied and more composed than the Union. Many battles were won by the Confederates in the eastern theater such as the battles of Fredericksburg and Bull Run. Overall it is shown that the Confederates were well supplied in the east while the Union had ships handy and well composed plans for the west. The Union dominated the naval theater in battles such as the battle of Fort Henry and the battle of Fort Donelson. The Union had ships ready to fight so they were able to dominate the Naval theater. In the Western theater the Union were able to win many battles such as the battle of Shiloh and the battle of Chattanooga. The Union were able to surround and outnumber the Confederates in many battles, which caused them to dominate this theater. 

  The scavenger-hunt activity was probably my favorite activity that we've done all year. It gave my classmates and I the chance to get out of the class and walk around the school rather sitting at a desk. It was also interesting to learn how to create the QR codes because of how easy and fast it was. One downside to this activity was the problems with the WiFi. Some spots in the school didn't have great WiFi so it slowed down the process when we had limited time. The Padlet was also a new experience for many people in my class. Although it was a little disorganized, it was a new way to see my whole class collaborate on an idea. Overall, this weeks activity was surely one of the best ones so far.