The Week That Was In 505

This week 505 continued our study of the Declaration of Independence (DOI – I’m tired of typing all those letters). We used an awesome lesson from Kevin Roughton (@mrroughton) to breakdown the crazy words of the DOI.

As usual, I rarely do the same thing year after year. For example, last year I spent 2 days on the DOI. However, this year, we spent 6 total class days. I have cut out a lot of useless crap so I could focus on the important stuff – the DOI, Constitution, and hopefully I can get to Reconstruction this year.

I have seen a lot of blackout poetry related to the DOI on Twitter, and I was inspired. Why not take a deep dive into the famous words of Jefferson, gets students thinking about the words, and get creative? That is where this week headed:

Monday – study of the Declaration vocabulary and discussion.

Tuesday – Deciding if we agree with the Declaration’s arguments, and working in some Hamilton music.

Wednesday – Introduce Blackout poetry – followed by self-doubt and negativity.

Thursday – Complete Blackout Poetry – followed by feeling accomplished and awesome going into the weekend.

Monday and Tuesday

The previous week we learned about the history behind the DOI with an 8pARTS. This week we were going to look at the DOI as a breakup letter between the colonies and Britain. I used to read a fake breakup letter, but this year I showed some classic breakup clips from my 3 favorite shows – Seinfeld, Friends, and The Office. After the videos, we explored the vocabulary and meaning behind the document. I’ll admit, I never know how to approach this because there are so many vocabulary words, and phrases, kids don’t understand. Using inferences and context clues is a must to understand it all. However, it seems like it would take a week, or longer, to get through it properly.

So, I had students read through the opening of the DOI and as expected, it’s the same words and phrases:

dissolve political bands
self evident
unalienable
prudence
instituted
separate and equal station
endowed
usurpations
despotism
dictate

I wanted students to look up some of these phrases, but it wasn’t going anywhere. I took matters into my own hands. The commonly unknown words I highlighted on the original file and I read Jefferson’s opening words. As I read, I offered direct instruction. I don’t know about other teachers, but I love what this document has to offer. I try to avoid direct instruction for more than 10 minutes, but I am passionate about the DOI. Jefferson’s words have power. Jefferson’s words have meaning. Jefferson’s words have influence throughout history. I LOVE teaching this. After this direct instruction, I gave students 10 minutes to sort modern day translations of the DOI with the regular version. This worked out really well and seemed to help the students make sense of this document.

When Tuesday rolled around, we continued our study of the DOI. The presentation from @mrroughton had a section where the students decided if they agreed with the meaning of specific statements from the DOI. I read each statement and students decided of they agreed or disagreed with the statement. For example, with this line, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed,” students decided if they agreed or disagreed with, “People would rather complain than actually change something.”

The next part of the lesson was the song, “You’ll Be Back,” from the musical Hamilton. Whenever I can use music from Hamilton, the better. Students LOVE this musical and it’s so engaging. Students listened to the song with the lyrics and they always ask me to play iy multiple times.

The last part of the lesson was a Thin Slide where I asked the question, “What does the Declaration of Independence mean to you?” Students had 4 minutes to create a slide with 1 picture and 1 word. After 4 minutes, students wrote a claim with evidence and reasoning to support their 1 word. They had to use their 1 word in the response. Students need a lot of help with writing claims so I provided some sentences starters for scaffolding. This Thin Slide was important because it set up our blackout poetry lesson for the Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday and Thursday were the final days of our DOI lesson. I decided to try blackout poetry for the first time. I had students reflect on their Thin Slide response to help focus their thinking on creating a blackout poem about the DOI.

The goal for students was creating a poem about the meaning of the DOI. Before school started, I got on NewsELA and found a primary source of the DOI. I created, and printed, 3 lexile versions of the document. Here were my steps:

Students skimmed the document and lightly circled words they might use.
Students wrote out their words and tried to find connecting words such as: the, for, but, etc.
They finalized their chosen words by creating darker boxes.
Then students drew pictures and symbols.
Finally they added color and blacked out the rest.

At first students seemed overwhelmed and had a lot of self doubt. But, as we worked through the process for 2 days, they realized they were making things happen and gained a lot of confidence. Here are their creations: