Course(s)
Lesson Abstract
Understanding the 1824 election
Description
Understanding the 1824 election
Rationale (why are you doing this?)
A misunderstood topic that needs clarification
Lesson Objectives - the student will
- Use primary and secondary sources to solve a huge problem of understanding the election of 1824 and it’s significance
- Relate elections past with current events
District, state, or national performance and knowledge standards/goals/skills met
- Local Standard 2B adopted from common core standards:
- Creating active and responsible citizens that identify and analyze public problems; deliberate with other people about how to define and address issues; take constructive, collaborative action; reflect on their actions; create and sustain groups; and influence institutions both large and small.
Secondary materials (book, article, video documentary, etc.) needed
- Electoral Map of 1824: https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/1ad55d58-0d0b-419f-9c98-e3d6098a83cf/a947e317-3a94-45a0-967f-ebfa48cd9693.jpg
- Insert from Donald Ratcliffe power point: “States where the Legislature chose: the estimated popular vote”
Primary sources needed (document, photograph, artifact, diary or letter, audio or visual recording, etc.) needed
- John Pemberton to Andrew Jackson, February 15, 1825, "I have not language to express to you, the deep sorrow, and mortification I feel in the result of the late Election, by the Representatives of the People (falsely so styled) in their choice of a President of the US."
https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llrd&fileName=001/llrd001.db&recNum=266
Fully describe the activity or assignment in detail. What will both the teacher and the students do?
- Students will be given the electoral map from the 1824 election.
- Students will play a game of Kahoot
- https://play.kahoot.it/ - /intro?quizId=ceb70fe5-8ea1-43ca-abf1-ccf7b3b254ab
- Students will then be confused and I will send the primary source link to the students. They will be asked, Who won?
- A short discussion of the proceedings in the House of Representatives will be had between students and teacher
- I will then give a lecture the way that I’ve always done that gives the WRONG conclusion.
- The students will then play the Kahoot game again. After this they will be in total confusion.
- I will end the lesson today by handing them the other primary source (the letter to Jackson)
- On day 2
- We will play the Kahoot game again and this time students should get all of them correctly.
- I will hand them the electoral map from 1824 again
- Now I will have my new lecture (including legit trades in the House of Representatives) notes next to the old ones
- Once again there should be confusion
- I will now give them the popular vote totals from the states whose legislatures picked electors
- Students will be placed in small groups and asked what to believe (yesterday or today)
- Students will share their answers with the group and their rationale (which has to be written)
- I will conclude the lesson by saying that the Electoral College worked the way it was suppose to
- And that the House of Representatives choosing was a feature of checks and balances in the presidential election that has not been used since.
- Students will be asked to evaluate the feature of the House of Representatives being the final arbiter in deciding presidential elections
Assessment: fully explain the assessment method in detail or create and attach a scoring guide
- All five of the presidential candidates will appear in a challenging matching part of the test.
- One essay will be written for the students to answer over this election:
- Explain what really happened in the Election of 1824 and why such a strong myth grew from this election. (10 points)