Happy Halloween! I hope those of us who go Trick or Treating will have weather on our side - it's not looking too promising. Might be a trip to buy some candy and stay indoors... Hey! Did you know that I am archiving all weekly emails on my blog? A few weeks ago I shared with you my class website. Now you can visit mrbruceshistory.blogspot.com to see all of the posts/emails. You can also get to them at the class site and click "Blog".
As I mentioned last week, the first Marking Period is coming to a close. And we are set to complete our first major historical interpretation just in time. This week, we practiced using background information to get a useful evaluation from a piece of evidence. We read two short excerpts written by George Washington, written just a week apart as he was camped at Valley Forge.
In the first letter, he expressed his feelings about Patriotism and its inability to sustain a "long and bloody war." We used what we learned about the deplorable conditions his army had faced that winter -- the defeats by the British that led to the loss of Philadelphia, the cold and poorly equipped soldiers, and the death of 2500 soldiers to cold, starvation and disease -- and how these conditions affected Washington's perspective and overall outlook on the war. As of April of 1778, it wasn't good.
In contrast, the second letter a week later, was full of celebration, opportunity, and hope! We used what we learned about the French commitment to the American cause and realized up that the second letter was written right after Washington heard the news of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and France, where they promised full support for the American cause. This news, indeed, was the promise that Washington's army needed to leave Valley Forge and face the British. These things are not just good to know, it allowed us to see the benefit of building an understanding and applying that to how we evaluate our evidence. Through it we can see a deeper connection between and among events along the timeline of the American Revolution.
We spent the remainder of the week in the computer lab employing the strategies we learned to evaluate evidence to answer our individual compelling questions. We'll cap their work off with poster presentations next week where students will display their question, the evidence they used and what it said, and how it pointed to the interpretation they developed. This poster will conclude this unit as well as the Marking Period for Mr. Bruce's History.
I encourage you to explore the American Revolution a little more deeply this weekend and into the next. Ask your student questions about their investigation. What did they find that the textbook couldn't provide? Finally, why does that they discovered, learned, and concluded matter? I also encourage you to take a look again at these events through some of my favorite resources:
- The Revolutionary War - George Washington's Mount Vernon: There are a few short video presentations on here as well as short articles about the War, particularly Washington's influence
- American Memory Timeline Not a timeline in the traditional sense, this is a collection of primary documents from our nation's premier library. The topics list at the right will guide you to the sources which are organized by year
- Gilder Lehrman - Presentations on the War for Independence: Another set of video presentations, lectures, of prominent historians sharing their research and findings about the greatest era of our history
Stay tuned. We can't learn about the Constitution of the United States unless we break down the reasons it was needed.
Yours,
Mr. Bruce
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