Summer SAVY 2017, Session 1/Day 1- Rebels and Revolutionaries (Rising 6th/7th)

Posted by delislss on Monday, June 12, 2017 in SAVY.

We have had a great start to our adventures through the revolutionary era! Today, everyone jumped right in. We began with introductions and then moved on to brainstorming about things we know already about the American Revolution and things that we would like to learn more about. Our next step was to think about what it means to be an historian. Each day we will think carefully about how we study history and what tools we need. Today we especially focused on thinking about sources and asking questions.

Our big goal for today was to lay the foundation for the American Revolution. To do that, we had to go back further in time to the Seven Years’ War. The main question that we asked today was “Why was the Seven Years’ war a turning point in history?” We thought about North America before the war, during the war, and after the war to help us see change over time. We also took a look at Ben Franklin’s account of an early episode in the war under the command of General Edward Braddock. In this activity, we got to read a primary source and practiced “thinking like an historian” by interrogating the source.

After lunch, we divided into two groups. Each group became an expert on a particular rebellion that followed the Seven Year’s War. Here we began asking which groups of people were rebelling after 1763 and why. This will be a question that we will revisit many times over the course of the week. This was a challenging assignment, and both groups did a fantastic job!

Our rebels and revolutionaries are great at asking questions and thinking deeply about the advanced material that is presented to them! Tomorrow, we will be thinking about the revolution(s) before 1776. See everyone tomorrow!

Dr. Frances