History in miniature

Carrie Kirschner/The Independent

South Shore December 15, 2006 09:44 am

— For many students, American history, like many of the actors that shaped it, is a dead subject.
Not so in the classroom of Pat Smith.
In Smith’s fifth-grade classroom at Mc-Kell Elementary in South Shore, the American Revolution is alive, thriving in colonial Williamsburg.
The students, with the help of their parents and grandparents, have constructed a model of the Virginia settlement. They constructed the town out of popsicle sticks, coffee grinds and other materials. They built private homes, business and other real life Williamsburg establishments — including the town’s tavern, a replica of The College of William and Mary, the Governor’s Mansion and a shoemaker’s shop.
Using the model as a backdrop for discussion, the students are learning how the town worked in the larger context of early American politics and the Revolutionary War.
Every morning at 10:30, the students gather around the board, sitting on plastic milk crates.
Smith begins Wednesday by posing a string of questions to the class. “Tell me what the Townshend Act was,” she says. Almost immediately students begin to shout out answers, explaining the taxes on paper and other imported goods to Smith.
Next, she asks them to tell her about the Intolerable Acts. Several begin to explain its various components. One student adds his opinion, stating he wouldn’t let the British soldiers quarter in his home if he were a colonist.
Smith counters with yet another question. “What happened if you went against the governor?”
“You go to jail,” shouts one student. Another makes a reference to the practice of public humiliation and imitates having his head and arms in the stocks.
“We have to find out what happened,” Smith says, leading the class forward. “We have no place to quarter prisoners.”
She moves next to the Continental and British Army. When she asks what the British are called, cries of “Lobster Backs, Bloody Backs, Red Coats,” fill the classroom. Then selecting students from the class she explains and has them act out the British fighting style of alternating lines of kneeling and firing troops. This she ties into General George Washington and the class continues.
Students shout out answers to Smith’s gently prodding questions and add information they picked up from the class readings and Internet research she encourages them to do in their spare time.
The flow is liquid, controlled by the students with Smith quietly guiding its direction and incorporating a variety of tactics to engage each and every student.
The class is a complete inclusion class, meaning it has students with a variety of learning styles and abilities. Smith said she realized at the beginning of the school year that it would take a lot more effort to capture the interest of the entire class in certain areas so instead of creating lesson plans herself she turned the class over to the students.
“This was a class decision. We’re going to be doing more things where they build and construct instead of reading and answering questions,” Smith said.
“I want them to be involved in the classroom We like to do hands on things ... If I get bored I know they are bored too. ... I make the students part of my classroom and we decided what we could handle. We just brainstormed on different ways we could handle this. They came up with it. We wrote ideas on the board and from those ideas the kids got excited. They appointed jobs within themselves. Its just grown and flourished with all their ideas.”
As the year goes on the class will continue to brainstorm on how they want to approach the next subject, Smith said. “It will flow all the way through the year. From this project we will go into the Revolutionary War, Westward movement, Expansion ... we’ll go into building Conestoga wagons.”
“We’re telling a story through what we create. This can be our story of what happens,” she said. “You have to put the love of a subject into a child.”
CARRIE KIRSCHNER can be reached at ckirschner@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.

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