Emoji Summary Exercise: A Civil War Soldier

I wanted to share a fun way I learned about last fall about helping students with summaries. I can not take credit for this lesson. I saw this posted on Twitter and used these ideas to shape this lesson on a Soldier's Life during the US Civil War.

Most of these ideas come from the following resources. I would ask that you take a look at their posts on this idea's development.

Using Emojis to develop vocabulary and source analysis skills via @russeltarr

Emojis In the Classroom via @Erintegration

What Are 10 Key Issues In MegaCities Like New Delhi? Emoji Time via @MattPodbury

My Lesson:

For this lesson I wanted students to do some research on what life was like for your typical Civil War Soldier.

I had students read a section out of our US History Textbook that summarized some of the basic experiences of a Civil War Soldier's experience.

I had students examine the following infographic to that compare and contrast's soldiers from the Civil War to today's modern soldier.  The American Civil War

I required students to watch the following Civil War in 4 Minute Videos via Civil War Trust.

The Civil War in Four Minutes: Soldier Life



Students were given these videos and told to pick at least two (they can watch more if they wanted). I wanted to give students an opportunity of some choice on areas that might interest them. There are lots of these Four Minutes Episodes and I use several others throughout my Civil War Unit. I like their short nature, stories, artifacts, and how full of information they are.

The Armies



 The Flags



Infantry Tactics



Military Engagements




Artillery



 Small Arms



I gave students an emoji handout that I modified from What Are 10 Key Issues In MegaCities Like New Delhi? Emoji Time via @MattPodbury and had them pick 4 emoji's and write short captions on why they felt those icons best represented a Civil War Soldier.

Overall I really enjoyed this as a way for students to summarize some key elements of life of a soldier during the US Civil War. I hope to use this as a summarization technique in some of my other lessons throughout the new school year. I also shared this idea with my Language Arts teacher on my team and she used this as a similar summarization tool they were using with one of their short stories they were reading. She really enjoyed reading her student's summarizes and thought they came up with some good connections.

Do you have great ways to help students summarize text or reflect on their learning? I would love to hear about it the comments section below.