Civil War Scavenger Hunt

         This week in class, in between writing our civil war research papers, we had a little fun! We created our own civil war battles scavenger hunt. Each person in the class was assigned a battle of the civil war. We each created a google doc with the name of our battle, the location, the date, the victor: union or confederate, the theater; east, west, or naval, and two reasons why the victor of that battle won. After we created our own QR codes and bit.ly urls, we told the person with the battle before ours where we were placing our QR code and asked the person which the battle behind us where they were placing theirs. Next, we ran around the school looking for the battles in order, copy and pasting the information to answer the essential questions, Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war: East, West, Naval? What are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles?

The Union and the Confederate both had victories in all three theaters. The union was

ultimately the victor of the Western theater and the Naval theater. They won battles such as Vicksburg and Chattanooga, by having superior strategy over the confederate. However, the Confederate was the victor in the Eastern theater. They won battles such as the battle of Fort Sumter and the Battle of Cold Harbor, by having a better strategy. There were many commonalties between the victors. The victor of all the battles had three main commonalities. They either won because of a smarter and more thought out strategy. They also may have won because the opposing side had less people, which created a much easier fight. Lastly, they may have won because the opposing side ran out of resources, like ammunition.

         I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt activity. It was a really interesting and fun way to learn about the Civil War. Sometimes the classroom can become boring and can start to feel monotonous. Getting to run around the school, and have fun, while still learning a lot about the Civil War was a really valuable class lesson. I hope to more lessons like this in the future, because I feel that it was very effective and also very enjoyable.