Reform and Culture: Unit Vocabulary

Reform and Culture: Unit Vocabulary
This collaborative review guides students through reflection, vocabulary, and content practice to reinforce key learning. Interactive activities and optional writing help deepen understanding before a final exit ticket.

This learning experience is designed for device-enabled classrooms. The teacher guides the lesson, and students use embedded resources, social media skills, and critical thinking skills to actively participate. To get access to a free version of the complete lesson, sign up for an exploros account.

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Teacher Pack

The Pack contains associated resources for the learning experience, typically in the form of articles and videos. There is a teacher Pack (with only teacher information) and a student Pack (which contains only student information). As a teacher, you can toggle between both to see everything.

Here are the teacher pack items for Reform and Culture: Unit Vocabulary:

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Overview

In this experience, students review and reinforce key learning from the unit through reflection, vocabulary, and content practice. First, students activate their knowledge by reflecting on big ideas and takeaways from the unit. Then, students work with a partner to review key vocabulary terms using flashcards and apply their understanding through a collaborative task. Next, students repeat this structure with important content from the unit, using flashcards and an interactive activity to make connections across what they’ve learned. Finally, the Elaborate scene invites students to extend their learning through an optional writing activity that asks them to respond to big-picture questions, followed by a short exit ticket aligned to key standards.

Estimated Duration: 45–60 minutes

Vocabulary Words and Definitions:

  • advocate: speak or act in support of a person, group, or cause
  • asylum: a place meant to offer care and safety for people who cannot care for themselves
  • commonwealth: a political community founded for the common good, often referring to states or nations linked by shared goals
  • conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something harmful or unlawful
  • civil disobedience: refusing to follow a law in a peaceful way to show it is unfair
  • Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: a law that required people to help capture enslaved individuals who escaped and return them to those claiming ownership
  • humanitarian: caring about the well-being of others and wanting to help people
  • journeyman: a trained worker who has completed an apprenticeship and can work in a trade but is not yet a master
  • masters: skilled workers who have reached the highest level in their trade and can train others
  • Missouri Compromise: an 1820 agreement that set rules for allowing new slave and free states in an effort to limit conflict over slavery
  • mutual aid society: a group formed to support its members with help such as money, services, or protection
  • poorhouse: a government-run home where people with very little money lived and worked
  • publicity: attention or awareness created by sharing information with the public
  • radicalize: to cause someone to adopt extreme or strongly held beliefs that push for major change
  • reform: a change made to improve society, government, or laws
  • resolution: a formal decision or statement agreed on by a group
  • safe houses: secret homes used on the Underground Railroad where freedom seekers could rest and stay hidden
  • sectionalism: strong loyalty to one region of a country rather than to the nation as a whole
  • solidarity: unity and support among people with shared interests or goals
  • strike: when workers refuse to work in order to demand better conditions or pay
  • suffragists: people, especially women, who worked to gain the right to vote
  • The Common School Movement: a reform effort led by Horace Mann to create free public schools for all children
  • The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments: a document written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton that listed injustices faced by women and was signed by men and women at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
  • The Second Great Awakening: a religious movement in the early 1800s that encouraged people to improve themselves and society
  • The Underground Railroad: a secret network of routes and safe places used to help enslaved people reach freedom
  • Transcendentalism: a movement that taught people to seek truth through nature, intuition, and individual conscience
  • union: an organized group of workers who join together to protect their rights and improve working conditions
 

Objectives:

  • Reflect on and apply key vocabulary and content knowledge from the unit
  • Demonstrate understanding of major unit concepts through collaborative and written review activities
In this experience, students are asked to engage in group work and discussions. The experience is intentionally designed around questions that will elicit discussion, thinking, and application of learning as a review of the unit.


Throughout this unit, you’ve explored the major reform movements of the 1800s by looking at the problems people saw in society, why those problems demanded change, and the actions reformers took to try to solve them.

Objectives:

  • Reflect on and apply key vocabulary and content knowledge from the unit
  • Demonstrate understanding of major unit concepts through collaborative and written review activities


What do you think is the most important thing to understand about why so many Americans in the early 19th century committed themselves to solving the problems they saw in society?

Post your answer

After students complete their individual reflections, consider facilitating a whole-class or small-group share-out. Ask several students to explain what they chose as most important and why. Encourage classmates to respond to each other’s ideas by making connections, asking follow-up questions, or offering alternative perspectives. This discussion helps deepen thinking and allows students to see how others interpreted the question: What do you think is the most important thing to understand about why so many Americans in the early 19th century committed themselves to solving the problems they saw in society?


Organize Students into small groups of 2 or 3, which they will work in for the next scene. When everyone is ready to continue, unlock the next scene.

End of Preview
The Complete List of Learning Experiences in Reform and Culture Unit.
Social Reform
Social Reform
An Era of Reform
An Era of Reform
The Women’s Rights Movements
The Women’s Rights Movements
Labor Reform
Labor Reform
Reform and the Arts
Reform and the Arts
Reform and Culture: Unit Vocabulary
Reform and Culture: Unit Vocabulary
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad
The Abolition Movement
The Abolition Movement
Reform and Culture Unit Assessment
Reform and Culture Unit Assessment
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