This is old news (literally!)

As I am trudging through this semester, well more like crawling at this point, I am working on my lesson plans and activities for my e-folio and unit plan. One of the activities I am proud of, that I have been working with Felicia, is another activity on cubing, but instead of the article being "current," we decided to date our articles back to the American Revolution. Yes, Felicia and I created two articles. While she wrote a newspaper article from the colonists point of view why they should be free from the British, I wrote a newspaper article from "The English Quarterly" entitled Long Live the King on why the colonists should be respectful to the British. Both of these articles lead up to the American Revolution. By having some students read the article from the colonists point of view and the other half of students from the British point of view helps them understand perspective, when it comes to point of view in general. It also gives students different perspectives on both sides (colonists and British) and why the war happened to begin with.




This whole idea of "cubing" when it comes to this activity works like it did for the current events activity. The PowerPoint would mostly be similar. It would explain the six perspectives and how to cube. However, instead of focusing on six of the viewpoints, we would only focus on three, for the purpose of this activity. For the "Long Live the Colonists" article, one group would read the article and respond to it using the viewpoint description. The second group would read the article and respond to it using association. The third group would read the article and respond to it using application. For the "Long Live the King" article, students would analyze it using the same three perspectives. At the end, each group would present their responses and then tape them down on the "super cool class cube."



The activity does not end here! After all groups are done presenting and their responses are taped down on the cube, we would compare and contrast the articles as a whole class. Some essential questions we would explore is:

What is comparing? What is contrasting? 
How did the Colonists feel about the way that Britain was treating them? 
How did the  British feel about the way that they were treating the colonists? 
Was there anything they both agreed on? 

By discussing these questions as a whole class, students would get to share their opinions, thoughts, and feelings about the colonists and British. In order to help students organize thoughts, I would use a Venn diagram. This would also help students understand the difference and similarities between the two: Colonists and British.






The end we would go over point of view and how it influences our personal lives, school, and community. Students would also create a journal entry on:

"Do you agree with the viewpoints of the British or Colonists?" 

Students would use the information from the articles and the Venn diagram to support their thoughts. Overall, this activity is great because it teaches students about the American Revolution from both sides. Students will understand the positives and negatives of both sides, as well as the similarities and differences of both sides as well!

This will be a great activity to introduce students to the American Revolution!




All for the U.S.A.! 

Link to the PowerPoint (which also includes the articles): 

PowerPoint :]