The Push-Pull Factors of why people went west in the years following the Civil War is a challenging topic. As I have tried to come up with different strategies over the past few years, but none of them have worked particularly well. So, today I tried something different. After having my students analyze "The Veteran in New Field" by Winslow Homer for 10-15 minutes and listen to the last 10 minutes of a podcast featuring James McPherson and his interpretation of the piece (also available at iTunes), I had each class come up with reasons why people from the east would want to leave and what was in the west that those same people would want to be a part of. As they came up with ideas, I made note of them on a popplet and had it displayed on the overhead projector for them to see while we worked on it. It certainly wasn't an exact science and there were a number of fits and starts as the students tried to figure out why people would want to move. I have included the copies of them below. Many of them aren't ideal, but they are the authentic efforts my students to free think their way through the problem with little to no knowledge of the topic beforehand.
D PERIOD
C PERIOD
G PERIOD
F PERIOD
E PERIOD
I am proud of what they were able to accomplish today, but certainly there is always room to make it better.
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