Realism in Teaching History 5th

In writing dendrite developing plans, I had a few simple exercises demonstrating taxation, representation, and declaring independence.  They are reenactment-style history lessons.

For representation, I had a simple vote for president and vice president.  These are our representatives.

For taxation, I handed everyone a few pieces of fake money and had the president and vice president decide on a tax, how much, and what it would be used for.

Now, I didn't expect these experiments to get so real so quickly.  The president and vice decided on a 25% tax, one bill from each student, to go towards military protection and safe roads.  But, the citizens noticed that these two leaders did not pay the tax themselves!  It was a hard lesson on what leadership can mean: greed!  It will transition nicely into a "Checks and Balances" lesson later!

So, I asked the students what can be done so that the leaders follow the rules.  We had calls for reelections and some students started writing a form of the constitution, rules on how power should be handled in our government.  It was a natural progression.  Power, corruption, and then more laws.

Later, for declaring independence, we had a reelection and students chose two leaders that would assist the class in writing a declaration of independence from homework.  I must say, it was hilarious.  It was so fun to watch this debate.  We arranged the classroom like the photo below as much as possible.  We read through the real declaration of independence, and rewrote the sentences based on the new terms.

I have video clips.  I hope to eventually get them up here.