Seeing Steven Spielberg’s new film about Abraham Lincoln is on my list of things to do during the upcoming holiday vacation. If you have that on your vacation list too and or you have already seen it, you many also want to check out the Lincoln Learning Hub.

The Lincoln Learning Hub is the official DreamWorks companion site to Lincoln. There are four main features of the Lincoln Learning Hub. Those features are a timeline, What Would Lincoln Do, Team of Rivals, and Who’s Who of Congress. The timeline is nothing to write home about, but the other three features are good.

In What Would Lincoln Do? students are given four scenarios that happened after Lincoln’s death. Students are given some information about each scenario, some background on Lincoln, and then they have to guess what Lincoln would do before seeing an expert’s opinion. Students can find out how Lincoln might have voted on women’s suffrage, how he would handle the war on terror, if he would have used an Atomic bomb during WWII, and how he would have handled Reconstruction.

In Team of Rivals students try to reconstruct Lincoln’s cabinet by reading short biographies of politicians before placing them into a cabinet role.

The Who’s Who of Congress activity shows students short biographies of important Congressmen who had to vote on the 13th Amendment. After reading the biographies students have to determine how each of the featured Congressmen would have voted.

Applications for Education
Even if your students don’t see the new Lincoln movie, the Lincoln Learning Center could be a good place for students to learn a bit Lincoln’s political ideals. If your students do see the film the Lincoln Learning Center activities could help them gain a better understanding of Lincoln’s decisions.