Fourth Graders Flex Historical Writing and Public Speaking at the "Road to Revolution" Presentations

Fourth graders led their parents along America’s “road to Revolution,” performing an imagined meeting of the Second Continental Congress. They have spent months studying primary and secondary source documents about the American Revolution, as well as learning about historical fiction writing. In advance of this performance, each child invented a Revolution-era character and wrote diary entries from their perspective, describing their experience of key moments, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. They then acted as these characters at the presentation, reading aloud dialogue as they participated in the Second Continental Congress meeting, and each gave a dramatic reading of one of their diary entries. At the end of the show, parents toured the room to examine the artwork that each child drew to supplement their writing.