I am in the midst of finishing my pre-American Revolution unit. Kids get a feel for the colonies, what types of jobs are available, and how they were different. Then they get a feel for why the colonists want to split from Great Britain- things like the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party. The last section, before diving into the American Revolution, are some speeches for and against independence.
The oddity of this unit is that the kids know the ending: the colonies split (hooray) and win independence (double hooray). The nitty gritty they don't know, nor do they necessarily need to know in 5th grade (bits for sure). But the broader aspects are where they often hold complete fallacies. For example, most of my kids thought that everyone thought slavery was bad (not true- although I am glad they hold that sentiment now, good starting point). Most thought that a majority of people were patriots wanting independence ("Come'n, who wants to pay taxes on paper items?!").
One of the pieces we are doing is a dual reading/writing one. I had kids pick 1's and 2's, then had one student pick a piece of paper out of a bucket. There were two papers in the bucket, and the one she drew was the side (and other's with her number) needed to represent in a bit of speech writing. Why assigned a side? Well we know how it ends, right? Wouldn't you want to be on the winning side too? The excitement in the room when people were drafted into the loyalist and patriot camp was fantastic. It really set the tone for their research since all of them want to have really persuasive speeches. Hopefully that will carry into this week, and some great work and speeches.
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