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The Northern Campaign: Teaching History Connected to Place Community Works Journal's Susan Bonthron recently interviewed Lois Michaud and Tracie Surridge, two of three teachers who designed an interactive and exciting American History unit at Burke Town School. Margaret Morse, the third teacher, was unable to attend. We were interested in learning about how the teachers collaborated to design this unit. They tell an exciting story. It was clearly evident that they had the strong support and encouragement of their Principal, Sonny Davis. To subscribe to Community Works Journal GO TO: www.communityworksjournal.org VIEW UNIT OUTLINE  Teaching History Connected to Place Three years ago, Margaret Morse and Lois Michaud—fifth and sixth grade teachers at Burke Town School in the Northeast Kingdom—taught a unit on the Revolutionary War. “What we learned was that it was too much to do in the time we had to cover everything. The unit had no depth,” explained Lois. That year, the two teachers took their students on a field trip to Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. They felt the experience was great but again “it was too much, too rushed.” The two teachers asked themselves what they could do to make a Revolutionary War unit have more of an impact without being superficial. After taking a course with Mark Skelding of FoodWorks called “Schoolyard Habitat,” they began to focus on a connection to place -- a connection fostered by their membership in the Vermont Rural Partnership. This led them to the idea of concentrating on the Northern Campaign of the Revolutionary War, much of which happened in Northern Vermont and adjacent upper New York state. Burke Town's Principal, Sonny Davis, suggested tying the unit into the watersheds, so that it made sense geographically. The waterways they looked at were in Maine, Quebec, Vermont (Lake Champlain) and New York. Photo Above Right: Students climb Mount Defiance during the unit. Discovering New Views of American History On a previous trip the teachers had taken, the teachers had a speaker who gave an entirely different view of Benedict Arnold from the one they had traditionally been taught. “So we started by buying Kenneth Roberts’ books.”(Rabble in Arms and Arundel were suggested by a Middlebury college professor who volunteers at one of the historic sites.) Then they bought nonfiction books on the Northern Campaign and read everything they could get their hands on during the summer of 2002. Books such as Saratoga by Ketchum and Benedict Arnold by Jean Fritz corroborated the information they had read in fiction books. “We got on line and started searching for books we could use with the kids. We asked at every workshop, we bought them everywhere, then raised money to pay for them.” Margaret and Lois got Tracie Surridge on board in the fall, when she joined the 5/6 team.  Planning the Field Trip “During an in-service day in October, we told Sonny we were thinking of a two-day field trip, and wanted to check out places and mileage. We knew we wanted to go to the Maritime Museum. We went on a professional development day in Southern Vermont to explore possibilities. We went to Bennington, Saratoga, Mount Independence, Fort Ticonderoga, and Fort William Henry.... We scouted out places to stay with 45 5th and 6th graders and16 chaperones. We started to develop a time line for the whole project to make the trip as chronological as possible, which was tricky.” The teachers got on-line and saw that the Maritime Museum does a “Battle of Valcour” talk, and that they had a replica of Benedict Arnold’s boat, the Philadelphia. They also spent extra money to hire re-enactors to guide the students at the other historic sites. “We were at school nights and weekends putting in hours writing the unit and searching on line to find hotels, prices for admission, and coordinating the whole trip. We knew that knowing the history was important; then we had to plan the trip. We created the unit to prepare the kids for the trip. We came up with our essential questions, and the standards that would address them.” Margaret and Lois had learned about interactive history when they took a course offered by re-enactors from The Living History Association. Later, Margaret and Lois brainstormed with Tracie about these ideas. Photo Above: Students drill like Revolutionary soldiers at Fort Ticonderoga. A Seven-Week Unit “We began with conflict -- what does it look like, feel like, what are the consequences?” To make it real to their students, the teachers invited some eighth grade girls to do a role-play about conflict, with students in the class witnessing and then discussing what they observed, and relating what they were discussing to their personal experiences of conflict. “We were constantly trying to make it real, make it breathe for the kids. For background, we gave them some information on Colonial times, and on the French and Indian War, and talked about the dilemma of whether or not we should fight Britain. We did a simulation on early taxation (using chocolate kisses instead of tax dollars). They understood the anger that was driving people. We wanted to get the issues into their heads. We portrayed both sides throughout the whole unit.” The Continental Congress Reenactment The teachers then introduced an interactive lesson on the Continental Congress. “The kids did it. Each student had an identity. They got one of several roles to play -- Loyalist, Patriot, or Neutralist” (most were the latter). This work gave them a time line in which to talk about the acts -- and conflicts -- that led to the Revolution. They also had to talk about Roberts Rules, motions, and points of order; the teachers used the opportunity to relate what they were learning about the Continental Congress to their own Town Meeting. “They set up chairs to simulate the meeting room, and the students had to argue their cases,” according to Lois. “At the end of each reenactment they reflected about what they could have done better. The students themselves realized, ‘We should have been better prepared.’ They had their arguments in line by the next reenactment. And they voted without knowing the real outcome of the actual Continental Congress in advance.”  Fitting the Unit into a Demanding Curriculum When asked how they fit their study into a demanding schedule that concentrated on science, math and literacy, their response was that their curriculum alternates blocks between science and social studies, “so we don't have to water it down. A whole block is spent on one or the other. Everything we did except math was immersed in this unit.” Urged by Principal Sonny Davis to involve the community, the teachers introduced “Pen Pals”: Students had to write three letters to pen pals about what they were learning -- a unique and interesting connection to local community members who provided an “authentic audience” for the students’ work. The students also had to write a narrative based on their person in a real setting. They constantly read and prepared for the simulation, and they wrote responses to the literature they were reading. Finally, they had to choose one area of specialization about the Northern Campaign to research and present for a final project. Meanwhile, “we were constantly reading, doing read-alouds of other books and diaries of historical/fictional people to give the students a sense of what life was like at the time.” The teachers used journals to help students understand how the foreign troops felt coming to the great Northern Woods, and Lois read parts of Arundel and other books from the Maritime Museum. Photo Above Right: Students work on their project displays. Involving the Community The kids were very excited about the Pen Pals. To encourage community members, “we put out ‘wanted’ posters at Town Meeting and the Post Office, asking for Pen Pals who would be willing to write three or four letters and come to our Picnic, which was going to be the culminating activity.” To show their Pen Pals what they had learned, students had photo albums and post cards. The teachers found photos on line and collected postcards for these albums. “Every night on the field trip the students had questions to answer that went with the pictures. The chaperones had instructions about what was expected. The students shared these photo albums and their projects with their pen pals at the culminating picnic.”  Dividing the Teaching Tasks Community Works Journal asked about how they divided up the tasks in designing and conducting a unit like this. “We organized ourselves by dividing in halves or thirds during teaching.” Lois and Tracie gave students the big picture of the sequence of events as well as the climate, transportation networks, and settlement patterns. Margaret taught the mapping. She went online and found maps, downloading and printing them, talking about the campaigns and associated places and events. She used these maps to create a Northern Campaign Atlas. Students had a list and rubric for the map they each created using other maps as resources. Lois used the same maps as overheads, talking about the events on the Rivers. “I had to be an expert on this stuff or I couldn’t be enthusiastic,” exclaimed Lois. According to Tracie, “Their enthusiasm was contagious—it made me want to learn.” Photo Above Left: Students present their work and learning at VRP Retreat 2003.  When it was time to teach events, Tracie worked with the students on their Pen Pal letters and their narratives. Lois covered the sequence of events of the Northern Campaign, and Margaret worked on the individual projects where students each chose one subject about the campaign to explore from a list she provided. They had 17 choices of project style (poster, story, poem, diagram, oral presentation, etc.). “The students really became expert. They presented to the class, and could work alone or with a partner.... Our standards were high, and we’re hard markers, but they all got at least a B. The kids were totally engaged. So much so that when we went on the trip, the kids at the Maritime Museum began chiming in when the museum person started to lecture, and eventually they took over the lecture. At every historic site the teachers kept hearing how well prepared the students were. Comments that students made after the trip were, ‘Now I can picture it. I was there. I stood where they stood.’ They were moved by being there. They could visualize and feel it. We did a lot of kinesthetic stuff: We stormed the fort [arranged in advance], and formed the hollow square. The next day we went to Mount Independence and Hubbardton Battlefield, having read The Captive at Pittsford Ridge. They saw where the battle took place, and where the troops had to retreat, climbing up and over the ridge.” For students who could not go on the field trip for some reason, the teachers arranged a “virtual” field trip using computers. “They saw pictures, read about it, and did it in the same sequence that we were doing on the trip”. For easy access, the teachers had put icons on the computer screens at school for the these students.Photo Above Right: Students prepare colonial meal for their pen pals.  The culminating picnic was a learning experience too. “The kids had authentic venison stew and learned to cook colonial foods. We got it all out of an early Colonial cookbook -- cornbread, corn chowder, brown bread and baked beans, cider, and pumpkin pudding.” They also presented their projects to their Pen Pals. They had 45 minutes with their Pals before lunch, and then had lunch with them, and could walk around and look at others’ projects. “It was their time to shine,” said Lois. “It was exhausting but satisfying.”The students weren’t the only ones who will never forget this experience of living history. Their Pen Pals were really impressed: When the teachers did a Pen Pal Reflection, “the Pen Pals all wanted it to last longer and volunteered to do it another year.” Photo Left: Pen Pal Colonial Picnic–Pen pals meet for first time. ©2003 Community Works Institute Press, All Rights Reserved May not be used for publication in any form without permission.
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