If we’ve put students to a rigorous, meaningful task, we will see the thinking in their work. In particular, we’ll see them reasoning with the evidence in support of their claims. In each example below, I included at least two pieces of evidence from the documents, and made a strong attempt at a model response, given the tasks and documents.
Lesson 1 response:
Slavery began in the British North American colonies in 1619, spread throughout the colonies, and then intensified in the South. The first African slaves came to Virginia in 1619 to work on tobacco plantations (1). Slavery existed in all of the colonies, but was most concentrated in the South because of the plantation economy (2).
Lesson 2 response:
The labor system of slavery dominated in the South and not in the North because of economic and cultural differences between the regions. For example, the economy in the North was more varied, while in the South, it relied upon the labor-intensive cultivation of a few cash crops (3). Southern plantations relied upon slave labor to cultivate tobacco, cotton, and other crops. Northern culture was also less suited to a slave society than that of the South, in part because of its Puritan heritage (1). Winthrop, the most important Puritan leader of the colonial period, preached that Christians must treat each other fairly in business; specifically, he preached against benefiting unfairly from someone else’s labor (2). The Puritan work ethic and moral code that Winthrop preached was inconsistent with the institution of slavery. It isn’t clear though if Winthrop portrayed Puritan values completely accurately here because we know that Northerners did benefit from the slave trade even if the labor system in the North wasn’t dominated by slavery.
Compare the Examples:
What do you notice?
As precisely as possible, what thinking does the second task set students up to do?
What differences in the nature of the task (question and texts) drive more rigorous student thinking in the second example?