This past week has been all about the Declaration of Independence. We have watched a video of a live reading of the Declaration by famous actors that includes a thoughtful and important introduction by Morgan Freeman. Mrs. Merrigan led us in an investigation of the painting by John Trumbull depicting the moment when the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was presented to the Second Continental Congress. We learned how to use ThingLink to annotate an historical document. Your annotations along with a brief reflection should have been submitted using the link tinyurl.com/turnindi - please make sure this is done. We also watched an excerpt from the movie John Adams which showed some of the debates and issues surrounding the creation and adoption of the Declaration, and now we are diving into the actual text.
Today we had a good discussion on thinking and reading like a historian. We then discussed the idea that historians have disagreed as to whether the colonial leaders were motivated by selfish or ideological reasons when they wrote and then adopted the Declaration of Independence. We looked at an excerpt from Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and we looked at an excerpt from Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States. Tomorrow we will examine the claims and evidence in both of these excerpts.
- Mr. H.
No comments:
Post a Comment