Our Reconstruction unit started with a few simple questions: What is History? Who cares? Why Study it? The overarching theme to the students’ answers was that we study history to learn from it and to not repeat it. Then students considered the Declaration of Independence. Discussing why and when it was written. For a few weeks children examined the northern and southern states trying to learn why the south succeeded from the north. They learned how different the northern and southern states were economically and culturally. Each week children were assigned to read texts from History of US, and Cobblestone Magazine which provided information about the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation and the struggle to ratify the 13th Amendment. We read aloud Pat Sherman’s picture book, Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation and started watching the movie Lincoln, stopping frequently to discuss this masterful depiction of Lincoln’s struggle to pass the 13th Amendment. Most recently students were introduced to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Given the six levels of understanding children discussed and sorted each from lowest to highest levels. To practice what they learned about Blooms, students were assigned to read a text and develop questions for their classmates at specific levels of understanding.