Thirteen Colonies and American Revolution

Five kids from our middle group of students have taken part in a social studies class on the Thirteen Colonies and American Revolution. They began the unit individually by researching explorers who traveled to the new world. As a class, they began researching the colonies of New York and Virginia. A large focus of class was on reading for information and sharing strategies that work for locating and interpreting information. Each student chose one colony to research and present to the class. They learned about who founded their colony and where the founders immigrated from, what opportunities the people of the colony were looking for, if the people had interactions with Native Americans and what the interactions were like, what the climate was like and what daily life was like for children, women and men in their colony. Each student wrote about their findings and started their own Colonies and American Revolution book! The students made a Colony Puzzle in class that they put together to practice naming the colonies and their geographic locations. They added pages to their books by learning and writing about important figures, events, ideals and causes of the American Revolution. They ended the unit by studying the Declaration of Independence, focusing on why it was written and what exactly, it declared.