“Guess who won this battle?” teacher Cindy Agner asks.
“No one,” the kids chorus.
“This is what they call a draw.”
And this is how the Civil War comes to life for a roomful of fourth-graders in Northern Virginia, 150 years after the nation’s deadliest armed conflict began. Agner’s reenactment of the landmark naval Battle of Hampton Roads — a tactile lesson the vet eran teacher dreamed up this year — drew her Fairfax County class into a chapter of American history that has long provoked education debate.