There is so much to teach when it comes to learning about the Causes of the American Revolution. You’ll find countless activities and lessons out there, but which ones are worth your time?
You’ll need to choose lessons that are meaningful and will get your students to truly understand the events that led up to the American Revolution.
Here is a curated list of the must-do activities and lessons you can’t skip.
Presentation Slides and Guided Notes
When you start your unit and introduce the causes of the American Revolution you need a PowerPoint or Google Slides to have visuals while you teach.
I’m a huge proponent of providing background knowledge to students. I work with many English Learner students so it’s important to front-load vocabulary before students begin to read and write about the Causes of the American Revolution. But in reality, ALL students need to learn the vocabulary.
Show slides that have primary sources and concise information about each event that caused the American Revolution and eventually led to the Declaration of Independence. Include domain-specific vocabulary words and pictures to help students understand and remember the words.
While you are teaching using the slides, hold your students accountable by taking notes. Elementary students usually won’t know what to include in their notes, and note-taking can be cumbersome for them. So I use fill-in-the-blank guided notes. These guided notes are great for students to refer back to before reviewing for a quiz or test.
Do Hands-on Activities
Fun hands-on activities improve student understanding of the causes of the American Revolution. After I teach about one of the causes, my students do something hands-on and they get an opportunity to be creative by doing some drawing or coloring! You can read more about the activities we do in this blog post. My students do the following:
- Timeline of the Road to the Revolution
- Comic strip of Paul Revere’s midnight ride
- Posters to protest the Proclamation of 1763, the Stamp Act, and British Imports
- Newspaper article about the Boston Tea Party
- Midnight Ride of Paul Revere Comic Template
- Join or Die Benjamin Franklin Drawing
- Declaration of Independence Funny Fill-in-the-blank (similar to Mad-Libs)
Show Causes of the American Revolution Videos
Showing videos brings history to life and is engaging for your students. Here is a list of videos that do a good job explaining the causes of the American Revolution for upper-grade students.
Liberty Kids
Liberty Kids has 47 videos about the American Revolution that include the causes and the actual events that occurred during the war. Each video is a cartoon and is about 23 minutes long. The videos are outdated but my students enjoy them.
Pick and choose which videos to have your students watch since there is no way they will have time to watch them all. If your students have Chromebooks, assign the videos to watch at home and a short summary.
History with Lego
History with Lego has a short video with Lego characters acting out Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. I promise that this video will be a hit with your students.
The Singing History Teachers
If you are looking for something different, this video is of a rap song that covers all major issues from the Proclamation of 1763, to the Stamp Act, Quartering Act, the Townshend Acts and finally the Intolerable Acts.
Gallopade
This video is meant for upper-grade students and explains how the colonists governed themselves through colonial legislatures and believed they had a say in their laws. This was the foundation of starting the war since colonists wanted to be represented in Parliament.
The narrator speaks at a nice, normal pace so your students won’t have any trouble understanding.
Causes of the Americans Reader’s Theater Scripts
Students enjoy acting out Reader’s Theater and this Causes of the American Revolution Reader’s Theater skits are a fun way to incorporate history and language arts together. These skits are funny and engaging because students get into small groups to read them. There are only about 3-4 characters per skit, so you won’t have students tuning out because it isn’t their turn. They are also a great way to practice fluency.
Create a Loyalist or Patriot Poster
Students need to know that during the time before the American Revolution, people were divided based on their political beliefs.
Patriots had other names such as Rebels, Whigs, and Sons or Daughters of Liberty.
Loyalists were called King’s Men, Royalists, and Tories.
Guidelines for the Poster
- Pretend to be a colonist and choose to be a patriot or loyalist.
- Create a poster persuading fellow colonists to support their cause.
- Include a slogan and phrase convincing the other side.
- Patriot posters must list a few grievances against Britain, and Loyalist posters must list reasons why the colonies should remain part of Great Britain.
- Be sure to save these posters for Open House.
Play Causes of the American Revolution Games
Kahoot
Kahoot is a game-based learning platform online. If you haven’t played, give it a try. It is free if you have a basic membership. Be sure to click Basic, when the pop-up for paid versions comes up. There a different games that you can play based on the Causes of the American Revolution
Subject. What I love is that you can edit the games. So if there is a question you haven’t covered in your classroom, you can easily delete it.
Jeopardy
Jeopardylabs.com has some FREE and amazing games to review any topic. You can create your own game or use a game already created.
We play this once we are done with the unit to review before our big test.
Questions can be edited so they are specific to what you have taught. I use this particular one in my classroom. Be sure that students have their Social Studies notebook and textbook handy, just in case they need help answering questions.
There are so many ways to teach the Causes of the American Revolution. These ideas are sure to get your students engaged and they will have a better understanding of all the events that caused the American Revolution.