This website offers examples of lessons and activities around the Revolutionary War. It doesn’t give full out lesson plans but would serve as a good starting point to build a lesson off of. For example, one of the activities involves writing a secret letter that requires a special mixture to read the invisible ink. This would be a fun starter activity to introduce a lesson about the life of a soldier during the Revolutionary War.

I love PBS. This specific link takes you to an overview of a Revolutionary War unit. It gives six lessons in sequential order that build off of one another. It is called a “Teacher Guide” that you can download and also provides a video that shows practical application of the lessons in your classroom. It is honestly such an incredible tool. This will be helpful for Assignment #3 when developing a unit. 

This site is especially helpful when considering our assignment #2 for this class. Since we are only teaching one lesson, this website gives very lesson specific examples that answer leading questions. The website breaks up various components of the Revolutionary War for easy identification of lesson ideas. 

This website offers booklists that students could take to the school library to find books about their topic. This allows students to have experience with various sources besides just reading everything on the internet. They can physically search for the text and read it in a book. 

This could be a source for both students and teachers. As the source above, students could use this list to find books for their research. Teachers however, could order books before beginning this unit lesson to set their students up for success. I am a strong believer in students using books for research as opposed to strictly internet articles and documents. 

This site has links to many sources that give information to the causes of the Revolutionary War. This would be a good starting point for student research as it gives an insight to the conflict that came along with the war. I am using this site as a place to find secondary sources but they also have links to primary sources. 

https://allthingsliberty.com/tag/secondary-sources/ 

This website is all things American Revolution. It provides a booklist of recommended secondary sources as well as featuring article written by scholars and researchers that have been featured in the New York Times, TIMES Magazine, the History Channel and many more. The website is broken down into different categories to allow for specified research. I read an article under the culture tab about how coffee houses were used for auctions and the type of people that would frequent there. This is my favorite secondary source website because it is very organized and the article are very interesting and informative. 

This is a video that gives an overview of the Revolutionary War. It gives the critical information in plain terms that would be easy for elementary students to understand. 

This website gives the biographies of important figures during the American Revolution. This gives students the opportunity to look deeper into specific character’s lives. This would be helpful for a research paper or project and could serve as a good staring point for students to gather information.

https://www.ducksters.com/history/american_revolution.php 

I discovered duckster.com while doing one of the module activities. It does a great job outlining the information students need to know and providing links to more specific information. For example, this page gives links to more information about specific battles and people. There are also activities like a quiz, word search, and puzzle based on the information on the page. 

The time of the Revolutionary War produced many written primary sources ranging from letters between comrades, to news articles, and even new declarations and constitutions. This website gives us access to what these documents in history actually looked like. We can learn more about what happened and why and the conflict going on within our nation during this time. 

https://founders.archives.gov/ 

This website is a search engine for primary sources of the American Revolution. Students can search for documents based on who wrote them, who received them, or the time period in which they were written. Some of the language is a little above what I think a fifth grader could understand but that is the case for most of these primary sources. It is good for students to see the way people spoke hundreds of years ago. With assistance from peers and their teacher, students can understand the terms they might not have been familiar with before. 

America in Class 

This website provides a timeline of primary sources for the Revolutionary War such as George Washington’s Farewell Letter to the States, the Declaration of Independence and many more. It gives explicit information regarding the events that took place and also provides framing questions to guide the students as they read the information. The headnotes and discussion questions were made to reflect the material to be covered as given by Common Core State Standards. Even though we no longer use these standards, it is helpful to have primary sources that allow for thoughtful reflection. The breakdown of the website is very clear and allows for thorough and specific research. 

This is a document specific website that has documents and articles written by people during the time of the revolutionary war. Not only are there documents, but there is also artwork for students to examine. This website would be helpful in a research project and gathering information on the perspectives of people living during this time. 

The photo below is a primary source because it is propaganda used during the American Revolution trying to get young men to join the war. It paints them as heroes defending their new country from the evils of the foreign man. It can be easy to forget that photos, art, and propaganda like this are just as useful primary sources as article and documents. https://teachitct.org/primary_galleries/american-revolution-primary-sources/