SAVY 2019: Session 4, Day 4 – Journey Through Time (Rising 3rd/4th)

Posted by hallep on Thursday, July 11, 2019 in Grade 3, Grade 4, SAVY.

We started Day Four in Journey through Time by returning to the Virginia colony with a focus on political freedom.  We came up with a working definition of freedom and then tracked its presence, or lack thereof, in most of the world during the seventeenth century.  We examined the claim, frequently made by the English during that time, that they were the freest people in the world.  We then looked to Virginia to find out if those freedoms would come to North America.

We first followed the leadership decisions of a governor named Lord De La Warre, who did not think freedom should be a big part of the colonial experience.  The colony ultimately decided to move in a different direction, which led to Reform of 1618 and the first elected assembly in the English colonies – for many, the beginning of freedom in English America.

We then talked about how every colony after Virginia would follow a similar model, which made it an unpleasant development for the colonies when England, in the wake of the French and Indian War, began taxing the colonies more directly – depriving them, in their words, of their freedom.  In this context, the class then considered the major moments in the buildup to the Revolutionary War, starting with the Stamp Act of 1765.

We finished with an in-class reenactment of the Boston Massacre, where we tried to figure out what actually happened and its importance in American History.  We’ll start tomorrow with how all of this culminated with the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War!