Thursday, February 12, 2009 9:50 PM CST
Elementary students probe for clues to find the 'real' Abe Lincoln
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — Did Abraham Lincoln’s parents own a general store? Did he keep a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography on his desk when he was president? Did his wife Mary Todd Lincoln die just after he was elected?
If some Carl Sandburg Elementary School third-graders knew that the answers to each of those questions is “no,” it could have helped them Thursday pick between the “real” Lincoln and a couple of impostors.
The school’s celebration of Lincoln’s 200th birthday included a version of “To Tell the Truth,” the old TV show where panelists asked questions to try to decide who of three people claiming to be someone was the real one.
During one session, students Tyler Wood, Jack Bennett and Reid Littleford donned stovepipe hats and beards and took turns giving prepared answers to 12 questions about Lincoln’s life from their classmates and teachers. The other students then voted on who they thought was giving accurate facts about Lincoln’s life.
The students didn’t come up with the right pick until teacher Lou Conwell pointed out some of incorrect answers, but she said the lesson was worth it because they picked the “real” Lincoln in the end.
“I knew the activity was high-level, but it’s good to set expectations high,” she said.
Conwell said she found out about the lesson while attending a workshop at Eastern Illinois University. The students learned some facts about Lincoln earlier in the school year and are studying the 16th president this semester, and the game was a good way to see what they’d learned, she said.
“It’s good for kids to be able to discriminate between fact and fiction,” Conwell said. “With any famous person, there’s always misinformation.”
During the game, Tyler might have tipped his stovepipe hat to the fact that he wasn’t the real Lincoln when he said he took over operating the family store after his father died. Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was actually a farmer and died after Abe was away from home and out on his own.
Reid’s portrayal of Lincoln included a statement about Mary Todd Lincoln dying less than a year after Lincoln became president, another clue, as she lived for 17 years after he was assassinated.
That left Jack, whose answers covered how Lincoln’s parents owned a farm and that the Civil War affected Mary Todd because she had relatives in the Confederate army and that she was sometimes jealous and hot-tempered.
After the presentation, the three students said they knew before they started who was going to be acting as the real Lincoln. They all had their favorite bits of Lincoln biographical information, too.
“He was actually in the army,” Tyler said, referring to Lincoln’s serving in the militia while living in Illinois. “I never knew there was a Black Hawk War.”
Reid said he liked finding out that there were other Native American tribes in Illinois at the time of that conflict, and Jack said he thought it was interesting that Lincoln visited the Union army during the Civil War and “helped them out a bunch.”
Other Lincoln’s birthday activities at the school named for the author famous for his Lincoln biography included a presentation by local Lincoln impersonator B.F. McClerren, a program on Lincoln’s early life by retired teacher Don Chambers, musical performances and a school art contest.
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 238-6858.
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