Lesson
Acts of Parliament
Objectives:
- Students will be able to explain the major acts of Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s by creating a poster and participating in a gallery walk.
- Students will be able to analyze the reactions of North American colonists to various acts of the British parliament in the 1760s and 1770s to assess the impact of these laws.
Materials
- Handout A: Acts of Parliament
- Handout B: Excerpts from Acts of Parliament
- Handout C: Poster Planning, Graphic Organizer, and Conclusion Questions
- Chart paper/poster boards and markers
Lesson Components
A handout to accompany the excerpted versions of the Acts of Parliament primary source.
Excepted text of seven acts of Parliament between the years of 1764-1774.
An activity to help students internalize their learning about key information about each act of Parliament that affected the colonies in the 1760s and 1770s.
Lesson plan
More Information
Chart paper for each of the group posters should be hung around the room ahead of time. The number of posters, therefore, should also be determined ahead of time. Depending on the number of students in the class, and therefore how many groups of two or three are needed, certain acts may be left out of this lesson at the teacher’s discretion. For example, a class of 21 may only be split into 7 groups of 3, or a class of 18 may be split into 9 groups of 2. Likewise, some classes may require two of each group; for example, a class of 28 may be split into 14 groups of 2, with each act of Parliament being covered by 2 groups. This will allow a large number of students to participate in the gallery walk at their own pace without crowding each poster.
If students typically struggle with primary source documents at this point in the year, the teacher may choose to model one of the Acts of Parliament and the poster creation process for the class. Read the act aloud (or have a higher-level student read it), and have the class follow along and annotate. Students should defend their annotations and be walked through this process as well, and collaborate as a class to construct a sample poster for that act. This process should be allotted 10-15 minutes, and the lesson times should be adjusted accordingly.
Students should be assigned to heterogeneous pairs or trios. For lower-level students, a differentiation option is to only require completing some of the Acts of Parliament around the room. For example, students may be required to only complete five posters, instead of all eight. The least significant acts in students’ mastery of this lesson include the Stamp Act (they can learn this content through the Stamp Act narrative), the Quartering Act, the Boston Port Act, or the Tea Act (they will likely learn this content through the Boston Tea Party narrative).
Standards
Advanced Placement
- Topic 3.3 · Taxation Without Representation
- Theme · America in the World
- Learning Objective · Unit 3C
- Historical Development · 3.1.II.A
- Historical Development · 3.1.II.B
- Reasoning Skill · Sourcing and Situation
- Reasoning Skill · Claims and Evidence in Sources
- Reasoning Skill · Contextualization
- Reasoning Process · Causation
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