Map Study

Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, we finished the book Pink and Say in social studies.  The students had amazing discussions throughout the read aloud, and were surprised at the amount of Civil War content within the book. It was a sad story, but very powerful!

After that, I told the students that we were going to think about what happened and changed in the U.S. in the 80 years between the end of the American Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War.  I challenged students to think back to all they learned about the U.S. in 4th grade. 

We started off by looking at two maps of the U.S. in 1784, at the end of the American Revolution and writing our noticings.  The students were very thoughtful!

Then, we compared those maps to the U.S. in 1860, approximately 80 years later, which was the start of the Civil War.  The students saw a lot of differences and had good ideas for why these changes happened. We wrote about the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the California Gold Rush in 1849.  We'll continue to look at various maps of the U.S. at the start of the Civil War in the coming days.