Justified to revolt?

Today we asked the question - Were the American Colonists justified in rebelling against British rule.

We started the day by writing a response to the above question from our own perspective. We had to write a single paragraph and present evidence for our perspective.

We then moved into groups and were assigned one of four different roles: patriots, moderates, loyalists and the British government (King George and parliament). We were given sheets that identified the perspective of people in this role and presented primary source evidence that explains and supports the perspective we were assigned.

We worked in our group to create a list of some good points that support the perspective we were assigned. We were able to pull from the materials provided as well as from chapter five of the text which we were to have read during the previous class session.

We paused to write a second paragraph from another perspective on the same issue. We could write from the perspective we were assigned or if that perspective matched our own perspective then we were to write from any other perspective.

Periods six and seven then used a text messaging curating program to share our ideas with others. We sent our points to our class "celly" (text discussion resource) and Mr. Williams approved them for distribution to others. We were then able to record the points being made by the other groups on a worksheet provided by Mr. Williams. We also were then able to send responses so as to continue sharing the perspective we adopted for the activity.

Period eight did not use the text management resources but instead took turns sharing our points. We recorded the points of others, on the same worksheet as periods 6 and 7, as they shared them with the class.

All periods ended the day by writing a third paragraph from a third perspective.

Mr Williams collected the worksheet and the three paragraphs as we exited the class.