Individual Lesson View
Declaration of Independence
From: Stanford History Education Group (SHEG)
Grade Level: (MS), (HS), (College)
Remote Ready: With Modifications
Time: 1 Class Period or Less
Length of Reading: Paragraphs
Our Summary of
Declaration of Independence
First, students read 2 historian's (Bailyn and Zinn) interpretations on the question of weather colonial leaders were motivated by selfish or ideological reasons (this totals 4 short paragraphs). Students fill-out a worksheet.
Secondly, students re-write the preamble of the Declaration of Independence in their own words.
Finally, students go through the grievances listed in Declaration and categorize them as grievances that would affect only the rich and powerful or all the colonists.
[um_bookmarks_button post_id=””]
Click the Bookmark Icon above to save this lesson plan to your profile!
Grade Level: (MS), (HS), (College)
- We put these in parentheses because there is no specified age group for the activity.
- However, we think it would be excellent for Middle School (MS), High School (HS), and College Students.
Remote Ready: With Modifications
- Links to the reading assignments can easily be emailed or posted for students.
- It’s much easier for small groups or pairs to coordinate a phone call or video conference meeting than for the entire class to sync their schedules. Have these small groups post answers, a synopsis, or a video of their discussion to your LMS.
- Paraphrase questions into your LMS so you can grade student’s written answers online rather than in an email or on a worksheet. Or if a graphic organizer is amazingly well done, you could have your students take a picture of their completed work and email it to you.
Primary Source Icon
This means that this activity utilizes primary sources
Secondary Source Icon
This activity contains secondary sources
Group Work Icon
This activity calls for working in pairs, a group, and/or having a class discussion
Writing Icon
This icon represents a long writing assignment such as an essay or a several paragraph response to a prompt. Almost all activities require students to answer questions, but that's not what this icon represents.
Reviews of This Lesson Plan
We would really appreciate your thoughts on this lesson at the bottom of the page. With that said, please review this lesson ONLY if you’ve used it yourself and can comment authoritatively about how it works. Thank you for bringing broken links and other issues to our attention; if we can fix those issues, we might delete the comment so as not to confuse readers. We reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, un-helpful, or political.