General Information

Standards Tapestry

People of different cultures and social classes played different roles in the Revolutionary War. It is very interesting how George Washington took back-wood hunters and trappers and made them into an army. Different social, cultural, and religious groups such as the Quakers, the French, hunters, farmers, and the intellectual elite all played key roles. If any of these groups had been left out of the equation, we could be living in a very different world today. I'd like to help students look at these people from the ground level and imagine what they must have been like.

Assessment Rationale

With this unit, I have chosen several different ways to assess the children's learning. The biography reports gives the kids a chance to show what they've learned through their presentations. I will assess student learning according to their input during in-class discussions. The journal, persuasive essay, and quiz will give documented assessments as well.

Humanities-rich Resources

The links below can be used as valuable tools to conduct research.  They will allow you to expand your lesson plans and give insightful ways to utilize primary source documents.

Type (book link, etc.)	Name	URL (if any)	Annotation (can include description and notes on how to use.
Link	Our Documents	http://ourdocuments.gov	100 primary resources from Natl. Archives
Link	Indiana Humanities Council	http://www.indianahumanities.org	Resources for US history from the IHC.
Link	Humanities - Rich Resources	http://www.indianahumanities.org	This page is full of databases of primary documents
Link	Library of Congress	http://www.memory.loc.gov/
Link	Collection Connections	http://www.memory.loc.gov/
Link	Archiving Early America	http://earlyamerica.com/series.html
Link	Letters to and from John and Abigail Adams	http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/
Link	Charles Lamb, "A Quaker's Meeting"	http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/
Link	Voices of the Am. Rev.	http://ahp.gatech.edu/
Link	Sailing west to Vinland	http://memory.loc.gov/

This curriculum is meant to be spread throughout the unit on life in the colonies and the Revolutionary War. If a teacher uses their American history textbook as the main part of their curriculum, they will find that these lessons can be inserted throughout the lessons from the book. As a GT teacher, I have other supplemental materials that I also use. These lessons are meant to fill in gaps or to take students more in-depth with the material.

Instructional Day	Description
Day 1  Overview and Journal	Give an overview of what happens in the Revolution from beginning to end. Explain that, if that's all there was to it, we could end the unit right here. Instead, there is much more to be learned than what we see on the timeline. Journal: A new island/continent has been discovered far off the coast of California. There are a few people there, but plenty of room for more. If you were given ten acres of land there, what would you do with it?
Day 2 Mapping	Hand out blank maps of the eastern US. Start plotting out which groups of people were at each colony: farmers in Virginia, Puritans in Massachusetts, Catholics in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania, etc. Read an excerpt from John Winthrop's diary written on the ship to the new world (from 1630) where he compares their settlement to a “city on a hill”. Read an excerpt of William Penn's writings.
Day 3  Quaker Debate	Give some more history on the Quakers and read from Charles Lamb's essay, “A Quaker's Meeting”, provide historical information up to the present. Facilitate class discussion on pacifism with arguments for and against it.
Day 4  The Big Picture	These two days are to set the stage for what roles are filled by different people during the Revolution. Take a look at the big picture of what is going on in the colonies. The people there, for instance, consider themselves to be a part of England with all the rights and responsibilities. They are expanding England's territory with plenty of room for everyone to have their own spot. Begin the “taxation simulation”, taxing the kids on certain things in the classroom such as having their papers stamped and charging the kids to have snack. Allow certain kids to vote, but not others.
Day 5  Debrief from the Taxation Simulation	Between days 4 and 5 we'll do other Social Studies activities such as current events or read Scholastic News. Talk about the taxation activity. What complaints did the kids have? Why do they think it was unfair? Try and look at it from England's point of view. Is there a way to justify or even explain it?
Day 6 Declaration of Independence	Read the Declaration of Independence. Try to translate together and list the grievances they had. How do these compare with the grievances they listed yesterday? Note the names and talk about how different they all are, and it will be accentuated by the biography projects.
Day  7 Students' Declaratin of Independence	Students will draft a “declaration of independence” of their own in the spirit of the original. Students must find an issue, whether it's a little pet peeve or something bigger, and write their own persuasive letter to whomever it may concern. They will make an itemized list of individual grievances and write their best argument for change. Some research may be needed.
Day 8 Begin Revolution Biographies	Assign Revolution biographies: Ben Franklin, George Washington, Abigail Adams, Molly Pitcher, etc. Go over research techniques and help them to find primary resources for each of their people. Students will give a first-person oral presentation on their subject.
Day 9	A week or so will pass for research time between Days 7 and 8. Presentations will be given for days 8 and 9.
Day 10	Continue presentations.
Day 11	After watching the biography reports, engage students in a discussion on how all these people fit together. Ex: Mercy Otis Warren, John Adams, Abigail Adams, and Ben Franklin.
Day 12	Give quiz on People of the Revolution.

Classroom Implementation Notes

Student response to this project was positive. They enjoy learning from primary documents and individual inquiry more than just learning from the book. The one thing I would make potential users aware of is a problem I ran into with the taxation activity. I tried to implement the taxation activity during a particularly hectic time in the school year. Different events popped up in the middle of it, creating some frenzied days in the midst of that period. As a result, the focus on this endeavor became lost, and instead of being truly successful, this component more or less fizzled out.

In the future, I will make sure not to attempt such an undertaking unless we have a week without planned interruptions to the normal schedule. Using primary documents has been a great asset to my teaching curriculum, so much so that I cannot imagine trying to teach Social Studies without them now. Replicas of the Constitution, online letters between John and Abigail Adams, John Winthrop's “City on a Hill” writing, and documents written by and about William Penn were all vital to my unit. I look forward to implementing the other units from the Teacher Desktop in my curriculum in the coming years.

Teacher Inquiry Kiosk

American Colonies Bibliography

Women's History Bibliography