Paul Revere's Ride featuring EduBlogs

Shared Learning Experience

Engage

Display or provide students with a copy of the poetry excerpt from Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Longfellow.
Ask students to turn and talk about what they already know about the man, Paul Revere.
(Some students should remember him as the patriot who created the famous inaccurate etching of the Boston Massacre)
Explain that the poem, Paul Revere's Ride, was written in 1860, about 100 years after the American Revolution. Ask students to turn and talk about whether the poem is a primary or secondary source and how they know. (Secondary, was not written during the time period of the American Revolution)
Read the poem excerpt aloud to students and ask the following questions to check in on comprehension of the poem:
*Who are the two characters in this poem and what will they be doing? (Paul Revere and "his friend"; they are spying on the British to determine how they will be traveling on this particular night - by land or sea)
*How will they communicate information to each other? (Through the use of lanterns in the belfry tower as a code)
*The last line of the poem reads, "“for the county-folk to be up and to arm.” What do you think that means? (Warning the colonists to be up and ready to fight the British with their weapons)
Explain to students that throughout this unit, they have read about several events leading up to the American Revolution. Have students turn and talk about some of the events that have happened that have led the colonists to a war with the British.
(Intolerable Acts, other taxes, Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Proclamation of 1763)
Remind students of the "turning points" (i.e. the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party) that ultimately led to the start of the war. Paul Revere's famous ride picks up after the Boston Tea Party and often marks the official start to the Revolutionary War.
Display several images portraying Paul Revere's famous ride (See Materials and Resources Section for images from SIRS Discoverer). Facilitate a discussion similar to the "Annotating Images" discussion originally introduced in Lesson 5: The Boston Tea Party. Encourage students to look at the images and think about:
*What you think you know?
*What you wonder about?
*What you can infer?

Point of View

Share/unpack objective by reviewing point of view:
*A person's point of view tells how that person sees the world based on his or her life experiences. In this lesson, we will look for similarities and differences in how three people describe the same event that occurred in April 1775.
Explain to students that while Paul Revere is the most famous for this event in history, two other men, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, played a critical role in the event that occurred on April 18, 1775.
Facilitate the creation of a graphic organizer in students' reading notebooks that will help them compare the similarities and differences in the retelling of this event from three different point of views. (e.g. triple t-chart, triple venn diagram)
Provide students with the checkpoint directions and articles and review the expectations of the assignment. Allow time for students to ask questions to clarify expectations.

Students will then write the answer to their checkpoint on EduBlogs. After posting their blog, students should comment on at least three other student's posts to share their thoughts.