• develop skills in seeing and understanding visual and print sources;
• learn to analyze and to draw inferences from sources;
• develop understanding of how the Civil War effects the lives of women;
• expand skills in online searching of the American Memory collections; and
• expand skills in the use of PowerPoint.

1. Familiarize students with searching the American Memory collections. Use the Learning Page lesson, The Historians Sources.
2. Provide students with basic instruction in PowerPoint.
3. Print out preselected document sets from the American Memory collections reflecting various perspectives of women.

1. Spread out document sets in classroom. Instruct students to look at sets and form groups based on personal interest.
2. Introduce lesson by distributing handouts about text and ephemera analysis and photo analysis. (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).
3. Give students copies of the Assessment Rubric illustrating assessment expectations and goals. (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).
4. Groups answer questions on handouts and fill out observation forms about what they see and what they assume. Instructors coach groups as needed and sign off groups when analysis has sufficient depth.
5. Students next go to the computer lab and locate their documents online in the American Memory collections. Alternatively, they may begin working on their presentation in the classroom.
6. The student assignment page includes more detailed guidelines for the PowerPoint presentation.

1. Instruct students to prepare a five-to-six slide PowerPoint presentation on what they have deduced using the captured images. As an alternative, students may prepare a presentation using posterboard or video.
2. Students present their completed project to classmates in a five-minute oral presentation with visual support.
3. Following the presentations, lead a class discussion centered around the generalizations that one can make about women's experiences in the Civil War.

1. Brainstorm what a textbook entry on women in the Civil War would include and how primary sources differ from textbook entries.
2. Point out to the students that textbooks present only a small fraction of the knowledge available on a given subject, from a textbook author's point of view.
3. Instruct students to write a 500 word textbook entry on women in the Civil War. Direct them to the Assessment Rubric. (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).
4. The student assignment page includes more detailed guidelines for the textbook entry.
5. Writing the textbook entry forces students to try to synthesize the information they have analyzed and heard from other students and to condense it into a cohesive entry. They may feel the frustration that editors feel as they try to fit their knowledge into short, readable paragraphs.

1. Approve the text and ephemera analysis and photo analysis forms.
   (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).
2. Critique oral presentation based on Assessment Rubric. (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).
3. Evaluate the ability to synthesize information from oral presentations into a written essay. See Assessment Rubric for essay. (Requires: Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Choose a subject for further research based on documents presented.