Stretch that Brain!

From an early age, children can practice the art of inductive learning.  It’s easy to tailor this learning strategy to any age group, but let’s start with an example from any 6^th grade text about Colonial New England in the 1750’s.  Have students imagine they are in a time machine, returning to the year 1750 to one of the 13 American colonies.  Ask: “What would you expect to see?” Make a list of those items on a piece of notebook paper.  Next, provide students with a list of words they would hear spoken by the people of this colonial town.  Have students read over the list and imagine the people who would be using these words. For example:  apprentice, axe, faith, freeman, oak, pelt, pine, pray, saw, sin, tan, town meeting, trap, whipping, master, leather, journeyman, harvest, cooper, barrel, etc.  Now, students should group together any words that seem to have common features.  Have them group these words into circles, filling at least five circles with words.  Then, in groups, have students decide what each group has in common.  Use this common characteristic as a label for each group. Now, based upon groupings, what statement can students make that might be true about life during the colonial period?   Look at each of the grouped words and have students think of three statements( hypotheses) about this time period.  As students read the text, ask them to refute or support their hypotheses each time they come across evidence that would do so.  They can write a page number and key word next to each supporting piece of evidence.