Review the major colonial grievances against Britain that led to the American Revolution, as a bridge into this year's study of the Constitution.
Last year you studied how thirteen British colonies became the United States. Start this year by remembering WHY. By the 1760s, Britain had run up huge debts fighting the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and Parliament decided the colonies should help pay for it -- even though colonists had no elected representatives in Parliament to vote on those taxes. The Stamp Act (1765) taxed paper goods, the Townshend Acts (1767) taxed imports like tea and glass, and colonists answered with the rallying cry "no taxation without representation."
Anger grew event by event: the Boston Massacre (1770), where British soldiers killed five colonists during a confrontation; the Boston Tea Party (1773), where colonists dumped 342 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay a tax on it; and the Intolerable Acts (1774), Britain's punishment that closed Boston's port and stripped Massachusetts of self-government. By 1776, the thirteen colonies had moved from protesting for their rights as British subjects to declaring full independence -- which is exactly where this year's study of a brand-new nation's government begins.
Mastery looks like: They can list at least four events/laws in correct order and explain how each escalated tension between Britain and the colonies.
Common stumbles: Treating the Revolution as one sudden event instead of a decade of escalating grievances and responses.