In my never-ending quest to help students with content-related vocabulary, I tried something different with my unit on the Causes of the American Revolution. I gave students the traditional study guide with terms and definitions, but I also created coloring pages to accompany it. Their comprehension of the terms was far better than in the past, and it was a fun activity too!
Basically, I created a visual for each of the terms and had the kids color and/or add to it. Some of the terms I left blank for the kids to create their own visual for the term.
I wanted to try something different because I have been teaching this unit for 20 years and am always looking to change things up. I also wanted to tap in to some of that creativity that can often get lost in a middle school classroom. I like to color! I like to use crayons in middle school! The kids do to. I throw on a little colonial music in the background and they color away!
I only had the kids complete the first coloring page in class. The rest I assigned as homework. I divided up the 22 terms into coloring pages of 4 - 6 terms each.
I'm looking forward to using this technique for my unit on the Constitution. I'll check back to let you know how that goes!
In the meantime, the link to the study guide, coloring pages, and traditional quiz that I use for vocab for this unit can be found HERE
