Scavenger Hunt!

The class did a Scavenger Hunt in class, we learned about 20 of the major battles of the Civil War. Each student was assigned one of the battles to do a little bit of research on. We typed up out research on a Google Doc that we made public so other students in our class can access it. The research covered the basic information of the battle as you can see in the example Document in the link below. We took the link of our Google Doc and created a QR code, and printed it out for quick and easy access. All students have to do is scan the QR code with their mobile device and they are instantly brought to the Google Doc page where they can see the information about the battle. Each student was assigned a number which they wrote on their QR code. Then they found the people who had the number before and after theirs, we told the people before us where we will place our code, and we asked the people where they will place their code. Once we had the location of the next code after ours, we wrote it down on our Google Doc, so when people finished looking at one QR code they had direction to the next one. The QR codes were hung up on wall all across our school. Once we finished learning about all 20 battles we went back to class and created Padlets to discuss what we had learned and patterns we had noticed.  

Created with Padlet

The Union was winning many of its battles in the west, some of the battles they won were, Battle of Fort Donelson Long, Battle of Shiloh, and the Siege of Vicksburg. The Union had lost one battle in the west, they lost at the Battle of Chickamauga. But they had lost many more battles in the East compared to the West. In the East they lost the Battle of Fort Sumter, Battle of Bull Run, and Battle of Fredericksburg. Also at the Battle of Hampton Roads which is the Naval Theater the battle was considered a draw with no definite winner. The Union and Confederate Ironclads were locked in a battle for almost four ours, although the Confederate ship had to retire, the battle was considered a draw. The Confederate army seemed to be winning in the Eastern Theater as seen in the Battles of Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville as many of these were stated before. The Padlet above shows which side was dominate in which theater and the battles that support that. 

Created with Padlet

The confederates won a couple of battles by outsmarting the Union, they even won many battles that they were outnumbered in, one example being the battle of Chancellorville. The Union defeated the confederacy because they had advantages. They had more people to fight and more troops. The amount of troops overwhelmed the Confederates in battles such as the Appomattox campaign and the Battle of Fort Henry. The Union also had a greater supply of resources and weapons because many industrialists lived in the north. The Confederates weapons did not match up to the Unions like in the Battle of Baton Rouge and the Battle of Gettysburg. The Padlet above discusses how and why each side won the battles they did and ultimately how the Union won the war as a whole. Its clear that the Union had the upper hand in many ways and that the Confederacy had to be more conservative with their measure and had to outsmart the Union in battle not out-power.