Tomorrow is Patriots’ Day here in Maine, in Massachusetts, and in a handful of other states. It’s a day to mark the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. As a good New Englander with an appreciation of history, every year at this time I like to share a handful of resources for teaching and learning about the American Revolution.
Images of the Revolutionary War is a compilation of images about the Revolutionary War. The images in the collection chronicle the stirrings of rebellion in the pre-revolution years, the war from both American and British perspectives, and events following the Revolutionary War.
Minute Man National Historical Park offers detailed lesson plans that can be in conjunction with a visit to the park and lesson plans that can be used independent of a visit to the park. Take a look at the Legacy of Conflict lesson plan designed for 5th grade students (link opens a PDF) to get a sense of the type of detailed resources that the park offers.
Creating Google Earth tours of Revolutionary War battle sites is an activity that I did for many years with my U.S. History students. Students would create multimedia placemarks for each battle in sequence. The placemarks contained information about the outcome and significance of each battle. Here’s a video on how to make a tour with with the browser-based version of Google Earth.
Video Lessons
Keith Hughes has a popular video in which he explains the American Revolution for middle school and high school students.
Crash Course has an extensive series on U.S. History. Included in that series is Taxes & Smuggling – Prelude to Revolution.
Mr. Betts has a YouTube channel on which he posts cartoons and song parodies to teach U.S. History lessons. Here’s one he did about the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
For Red Sox Fans!
This is usually the day that the Boston Marathon is held and Red Sox play a morning game. Neither is happening this year. For my fellow Red Sox fans here’s a famous clip from the 2007 Patriots’ Day game.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne’s) work include CloudComputin and 711Web.
