Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit IV: What Was the American Revolution? 1760-1836

Lesson 2

Contents

Major Concepts

Objectives

Suggested lesson/activities


Major Concepts:

The American Revolution had many causes -- political, economic, constitutional, social, legal, and ideological.

Objectives: The student will be able to:

  1. Select one cause of the American Revolution and trace its development from 1760 to 1776, constructing a time line of events relevant to the cause.

  2. Write a speech that a delegate might have delivered in the Second Continental Congress in June 1776 that could have led to the inclusion of the cause discussed in Objective One through some of the grievances listed in the draft Declaration of Independence.

Suggested lesson/activities:

  1. Discuss briefly some of the political, economic, constitutional, social, legal, and ideological causes of the American Revolution to the students and have pair of students select one cause and independently search and secure evidentiary information related to it.

  2. Outline the sequence of events, activities, etc. in chronological order and construct a bulletin-board display from the outline.

  3. Have each student pair prepare and deliver a speech of 3-5 minutes to be presented to a mock Second Continental Congress (the class).

  4. Before the presentation of speeches, distribute a copy of the Declaration of Independence to each student. Following each speech, students as a class will identify the grievance(s) that they think the speech addresses.

  5. The speech becomes an authentic performance by which the student's understanding of the cause can be measured.

Back to Unit IV: What Was the American Revolution? 1760-1836