Civil War Scavenger Hunt

Last week in class, everyone was assigned to create a poster for a specific battle during the Civil War. On the posters we were required to include the name of the battle, location, date, victor, theater, and two bullet notes explaining the reasoning for the victor. The battle I was assigned was The Battle of the Wilderness, which took place May 5-7 in 1864 in Wilderness, VA. This battle seemed to be a tactical draw since both sides, the Union and the Confederacy lost a great amount of men. Both sides also lost high ranking generals during this bloody war. After I included all this information on a google doc, I created and printed out a QR code that would link back to my google doc. Making a QR code is very simple, all you have to do is copy and paste the link of your google doc into a QR code generator site and within seconds a code is made. After printing out this code each person hung their sign somewhere around the school with a clue to the next sign that would have information on another battle. After the signs were hung, each person went around the school with an iPad obtaining the information that the signs provided. Once this was done we came back to class and looked at which side, Union or Confederacy dominated each theater (east, west, and naval).

After we collected this data we used it to help answer the essential question. It is clear from the data that the East was dominated by the Confederacy, the West was dominated by the Union, and the naval theater was dominated by the Union. In the battles of Fort Henry and Shiloh which both took place in the west, the Union was the clear victor. In both battles, the union greatly outnumbered the Confederacy in not only men, but also supplies. This was a huge advantage and was the main reasoning for the Union victory. The battles of  Fort Sumter and Bull Run are good examples of how and why the Confederates dominated in the Eastern theater. In both of these battles the Confederacy brought in reinforcements, they out numbered Union troops which lead to victory. And lastly the union dominated the naval theater in both the battle of Hampton Roads and the battle of Baton Rouge. In the battle of Hampton Roads, the Union ship the Cumberland was first sunk by confederate forces. After this setback the union strategically fought back and succeeded to victory. In the battle of Baton Rouge, the Union began to shell the Confederates, eventually the Arkansas, a southern ship's engine broke which lead to a Union victory.

Overall I thought the Civil War scavenger hunt was helpful in learning about specific battles during the Civil War. The activity allowed us to leave the classroom and take a new perspective on learning and actually searching for our information. The hunt made reading about battles much more interesting. I wish that the class was allowed another class to obtain the information on the posters because I still had three more posters to visit at the end of the second class we were given. I also thought it was helpful that we took all of the information about which side (Union or Confederate) dominated in the eastern, western, and naval theaters.