Student Resources:

• BRI Jr. Sectionalism Vocabulary Annotation Activity
• 7p*ARTS Graphic Organizer
• Thermometer of Rising Tensions Handout
• America in Transition Interactive Timeline

Teacher Resources:

• 7p*ARTS Slide for class display (educator to create)

Facilitation Notes

This lesson revisits an activity students may recognize from Unit 2: American Revolution: Rising Tensions Thermometer. It also integrates vocabulary routines and visual analysis strategies designed to scaffold understanding of complex historical ideas.

Anticipate- Day 1

Vocabulary Annotation Activity

• Transition: Distribute Vocabulary Annotation Activity Handout and an Annotation Symbols bookmark to each student.
• Instruct students to use the annotation symbols as a guide to read and mark the passage. The passage contains key vocabulary and a description of Sectionalism that students will draw on in the lesson.
• Once students have completed their annotation, they move on to a vocabulary selection in Part Two. There, students select five vocabulary words they think will be most important for the class to learn based on their annotations.
• Then, use a digital crowdsourcing platform like a shared Google Doc, Poll Everywhere, or use a non-tech option like writing on the classroom whiteboard to collect student responses. Students will submit their top five words that the class should learn.
• Finally, conduct a classroom discussion to build consensus around the words that the class should focus on. You can decide together on 3-5 focus words for the lesson by asking:
• What words repeat most often?
• What words are most important for our understanding of the passage?
• Are there any words you think we have mastered and do not need to be included?
• Which words can we quickly define, but don’t need to study deeply?
• Assign for homework a Frayer model or vocabulary word study and one of the vocabulary words
• To use the Frayer Model option:
  • Give each group a plain piece of 8.5×11 printer paper.
  • Ask the pairs to divide their paper into 4 quadrants with a central circle or diamond, creating a Frayer Model.
  • Instruct students on how to label each of their quadrants:
    • Center- Word
    • Top left- Definition
    • Top right- Illustration
    • Bottom left- Examples
    • Bottom right- Non-examples

Engage- Day 2

Vocabulary Mini-Presentations

• Group students so that each group has one student who was assigned each word from the collected vocabulary list on day 1.
• Give groups 5-7 minutes for each student to share their word and meaning with the group.

7 p*ARTS Activity

Adapted From: EduProtocols

• Before class begins, print or prepare a digital version of the 7 p*ARTS Graphic Organizer.
  • If going digital, use an editable format compatible with your LMS. For example: Google Slides or Docs.
• Transition: Arrange students into pairs for the activity or prepare students for whole-group instruction.

Scaffolding note: If this is the first time students use the 7 p*ARTS protocol, do this first iteration whole-group. Students can work in pairs or independently when they reprise this activity in the assess section of the lesson.

• Students begin by analyzing a historic image together, looking for items, people, and actions.
• Alternate group assignments of images, or ask all students to complete an organizer for each image:
  • Coovert, J. C., King Cotton. United States, ca. 1907. Photograph. 
  • View of Lowell, Massachusetts at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, with a row of textile mills or factories mainly along the Merrimack River. Lowell New Hampshire Massachusetts Merrimack River, None. [between 1840 and 1860] Engraving.
• Create a Title: Write a three-word title that captures the main idea or feeling of the image.
• Contextualize: Record the possible time period, location, and historical context of the image.
• Identify Parts of Speech:
  • 3 nouns from the image
  • 3 adjectives to describe the nouns
  • 3 verbs showing action in the image
  • 3 adverbs describing how the actions are performed
  • 1 or more conjunctions and pronouns/interjections
• Write a Paragraph: Use your words, title, and context clues to write a descriptive paragraph analyzing the image and placing it in historical context in the center of the organizer.

Model Answer:

• Three-Word Title: Industrial River Town
• Time Period: Mid-1800s, during the early Industrial Revolution in the United States.
• Setting: Lowell, Massachusetts, at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers, surrounded by textile mills, smokestacks, and industrial buildings.
• Parts of Speech:
  • Nouns (3):
    • Mills
    • River
    • Smoke
  • Adjectives (3):
    • Brick (describing mills)
    • Flowing (describing river)
    • Thick (describing smoke)
  • Verbs (3):
    • Operate
    • Flow
    • Rise
  • Adverbs (3):
    • Efficiently (describing operate)
    • Steadily (describing flow)
    • Rapidly (describing rise)
  • Conjunctions, Pronouns, Interjections:
    • Conjunction: and
    • Pronoun: they
    • Interjection: oh!
• Descriptive Paragraph:
  In the mid-19th century, Lowell, Massachusetts, brick mills operated efficiently along the flowing river, their chimneys releasing thick smoke that rose rapidly into the sky. The Merrimack and Concord rivers powered these factories. As the mills thrived, they attracted workers who contributed to the efficiency of the textile industry in the Northeast.

Class Discussion

• Draw students’ attention to the differences between North and South before the Civil War with an informal class discussion.
  • How do these images connect to the concept of Sectionalism?
  • How do these images reflect differences between North and South?
  • What economic or social priorities do you see in the images?
    • How might these differences heighten tensions?
  • How might the existence of slavery heighten these tensions?
  • How did the North and South’s different beliefs about the Constitution and government power lead to growing tensions before the Civil War?

Explore

Rising Tensions Thermometer

• Access the American in Transition Interactive Timeline. Have students review the events, looking for how the tensions surrounding sectionalism and differing priorities are rising.
• Students should focus on:
  • Factories in the Northeast
  • Cotton is King
  • Missouri Compromise
  • Nat Turner’s Rebellion
  • Compromise of 1850
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act
  • Dred Scott
  • Lincoln-Douglass
  • John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry
• Then, distribute the Thermometer of Rising Tensions Handout to each student.
• At the top of their thermometer, students label the event that was the most contentious or the event that most clearly shows the tension between North and South, in their opinion.
• Then, students will work their way down the thermometer, labeling the three other events that they believe most lead to rising tensions and sectionalism.
• Students will explain the event in their own words.
• To “color” the thermometer, students will write in keywords or people related to that event, such as “Harriet Beecher Stowe” for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Teachers can choose to have students illustrate in the thermometer as well.

Assess & Reflect

• 7 p*ARTS reprise
  • Students complete another 7 p*ARTS Graphic Organizer with an image chosen from the Interactive Timeline.

AND/OR

• Thermometer Comparison
  • Students pair up to compare and discuss differences between their thermometers.
  • Prompt reflection: Compare your thermometer to a classmate. How similar or different are they? How does this reflect what Americans might have believed at the time?

Extend (Optional)

• Vocabulary
  • Return to the vocabulary that students identified at the beginning of the unit. Ask students to rate their understanding (1-5) of each term compared to the beginning of the lesson.
• Discussion Questions
  • If you could include a fifth event on the thermometer, which would you include and why?
  • There were more than four events to choose from. How difficult was it to narrow down to fill out the thermometer? How does that reflect how difficult it might have been for Americans to manage the growing tensions between North and South at the time?