Welcome to the Groupwork Research Project on Colonial America.

Created by the 5th Grade U.S. History

Students at The Benjamin Lower School.

Project Overview   

    This composition/history project has been designed for the purpose of making our students active producers of knowledge rather than passive consumers of information.   Students began work by selecting topics dealing with Colonial America, researching information, and documenting sources.   Next, information was organized in concept webs and rough drafts were written.  As a group, students edited and revised their paragraphs, created a storyboard for the web page, and selected photographs and illustrations dealing with their theme. Below you will find links for the various topics on Colonial America that we've studied this school year, along with a detailed description of our annual trip to Williamsburg, Virginia.  It is our hope that students across the country will use this web page as an information source for research projects. 

The Capitol in Williamsburg.

One of the stops on our trip.

Mr. Hagy's History Class    

   Throughout this year in history class, we have participated in many fun and exciting activities to help us explore such topics as the colonization of North America, the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, many famous people, and much, much more.  In the future, we will study the Constitution, explorers of America, the presidents, and the Civil War. 

    Mr. Hagy has taught us to feel empathy for people in the past, which is very important.  To help us understand what it would be like to be on a slave ship, he arranged the desks in a square on the floor and pretended it was the hold of the ship where the slaves were kept.  Then the whole class was "loose packed" into the ship.  He read to us from Roots while we were being "transported" from Africa to America and asked us how we felt to be on the ship. He also showed us some slides of a slave ship to help connect us with the experience.  We definitely learned what it was like to be a slave during the Middle Passage.

    For another activity, we were put into groups and given topics about slavery to research.  The topics were passive resistance, field work, house work, the slave auction, and the slave family.  We had to write a three-part play dealing with our topic that we later performed and filmed. During our performance, the class took notes on our topic, and we tried to teach three things about our topic to the class.   This was a very fun and interesting activity that taught us how slaves were treated, what work they had to do, and how they tried to maintain a family.

    To help us understand what it would be like to be a political figure during the American Revolution, we researched and dressed up as a figure that our teacher assigned us.  Some of these individuals were George Washington, Patrick Henry, King George III, Lord North, and Thomas Jefferson.  We were either a Patriot, a Neutral, or a Loyalist, and we argued about declaring independence from England from our assigned perspective.  We called this activity our "Town Meeting," and it was one of the activities we enjoyed the most.

    We have participated in many interesting and enjoyable activities in history class this year - All of which made studying history a lot of fun.        

By

Lauren S., Will K., Katie C., Ryan G., and Laura D.

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ŠThe Benjamin School, 1998.