Use this lesson after reading The Constitutional Convention Narrative and/or the Constitutional Convention Lesson.

Objectives:

• Students will be able to summarize the main ideas behind the major compromises at the Constitutional Convention by reading a scholarly analysis of the event and answering questions.
• Students will reflect on the historian’s process for creating an argument by examining and evaluating the data on the Quill Project website, which summarizes the complex activity of the Constitutional Convention.

• Handout A: Warm-Up Scenario and Reflection Questions
• Handout B: Background Essay and Questions: The Great Compromise of 1787
• Handout C: The Quill Project: The Process of Compromise
• Computers to access www.quillproject.net
• Headphones for watching introductory video

This lesson acknowledges the main ideas and huge significance of the outcomes of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and asks students to consider the process by which the compromises of the convention were achieved. It offers insight into the historian’s craft of interpreting history based on the clues left behind by those who lived though the event. Over the past several years, the Quill Project at Pembroke College, Oxford, has used data analysis to better understand the process of negotiation that resulted in the compromises of the Constitution. It is recommended that students are familiar with the context and figures involved at the Convention before participating in this activity.