Mentor Text: Social Studies - Civil War

 During Social Studies this week we have been preparing to move in to the Civil War era. I taught about the government, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights to help students understand how state rights were a crucial part of the disagreement over slavery. We had some amazing conversations about people, the definition of men in the Constitution, and the atrocity of selling people as part of the trade economy.

 

This week, at the closing of my reading block, I read Light in the Darkness as a read-aloud to start the conversation and plant the seeds to get them to think about the treatment of slaves. We will dive in to the Civil War era next week and this book was a great text to discuss the value of education, value of people, and the horrific history of slavery.

Image is borrowed from Amazon website.

 

What I really like about this book is it is not too graphic, but is thought-provoking. The text resulted in gasping, and wonderful questions from my thoroughly engaged audience.

The book is very well-written and I will refer back to it, pulling sentences, when we study sentence structure as part of  language arts. It will make a great text to use during small group work to find samples of vivid verbs and compound/complex, and compound-complex statements.  

What are your favorite books to use as mentor text in Social Studies?

If you are looking for more great texts to use in Social Studies check out Collaboration Cuties