Additional In-School Programs

Revolution in a Box – A Guide to Teaching the American Revolution: Boston’s Revolutionary History 1764-1776 invites educators and students to explore the unique story of our nation’s founding as told through the historic sites, events, and characters that make up Boston’s 2.5-mile Freedom Trail. Activities and materials in this comprehensive kit provide teachers with extensive tools to teach students, injecting drama and excitement into American Revolution studies with hands-on, minds-on learning experiences.  Revolution in a Box includes a Teache​r Guide, Resource Disk, and primary and secondary source materials, including artifacts, images, supplies, and other teaching resources.

The Teacher Guide is a 68-page book with background information about the settings, characters, and events central to Boston’s revolutionary history. It includes information about using historical sources, sample worksheets, ideas for activities, and a comprehensive list of additional teaching resources. The Resource Disk is a DVD stored in a pocket on the back cover of the Teacher Guide. It includes a digital copy of the Teacher Guide with live links to web-based resources and digital versions of all images and documents in the Resource Kit: Revolution in a Box. 

Available to schools within a 90-minute drive from Downtown Boston.  Contact us here or call 617-357-8300 to bring the Revolution to your classroom!

The new Town Meeting Program is a highly interactive multi-week program led by Freedom Trail Players, dressed in 18^th-century costume with classroom teachers culminating with a student-led school-wide educational theatre presentation during school hours with parents and community leaders invited. During the program, two classrooms are engaged in learning about the living conditions of the colonists in 1773, and are divided into groups of loyalists and patriots over the movement to ban English imports.  Each participant receives a character assignment and learns to research by identifying pertinent facts about how their character’s viewpoint and actions relates to Boston’s history.  Students are exposed to literature, short films, and recreated artifacts that lend to the authenticity of their personal arguments; use journaling and group discussion to consider their individual character’s viewpoint, as well as similarities across intersections of social class, occupation, gender and age; and create broadsheets, placards, and lanterns that were typically used as tools of persuasion.  The program teaches students research skills by organizing and classifying information based on the assignments’ context and deciphering between pertinent and extraneous information.  It also helps students to capture the tone of argument in written language as well as practice rhetoric and debate by demonstrating their speaking skills using inflection, gesture and tone to reveal their viewpoint based on their research and discussions.  In the culminating theatrical event, students dressed in costumes they create use their knowledge to debate the validity of their arguments and persuade onlookers to sympathize with their cause. 

Contact us here or call 617-357-8300 to bring the Revolution to your classroom!