Via Flickr:
In class today, I drew up this set of notes about the American Revolution. I’d asked students to fill in the blanks on this thesis statement "Americans wanted to be independent, because ____________, ____________, and _____________."
Their chosen bits were ‘Americans hated taxes’, ‘Americans hated that parliament didn’t understand them," and "Americans wanted economic freedom."
I went through the "Economic freedom" category by demonstrating that Franklin, Washington, Sam Adams and John Hancock all found something to object to in Parliament’s laws… and it was that conjunction of interests that really fast-forwarded the Independence movement.
Organizing the elements into columns made it easier for me to explain… I’m not at all clear that it made it easier for students to understand. I hope this becomes clearer tomorrow.
