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A Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation Fellowship · Stony Brook University

Town of IslipHistory ProjectTown of Islip History Project
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Grade 7 · United States History and New York State I (Grade 7)

The Revolution Comes to Islip

Lesson aim

What did it cost ordinary people in a small farming town to take sides in the American Revolution, and how do we know?

Grade:
Grade 7
Time:
One 42-minute period (about 37 minutes of instruction, with a short buffer)

These lesson plans use a format adapted from the Stony Brook University Social Studies Lesson Plan Template.

NYSED Framework standard

7.3 · American Independence

Growing tensions over political power and economic issues sparked a movement for independence from Great Britain. New York played a critical role in the course and outcome of the American Revolution.

Common Core literacy standards

  • R1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis and conclusions.
  • R2: Determine central ideas or information of a source; provide an accurate summary.
  • R9: Integrate and compare information from several sources; note discrepancies.
  • W1: Write arguments to support claims with valid reasoning and relevant, sufficient evidence.

New York Social Studies Practices

  • A. Gathering, Interpreting, and Using Evidence
  • B. Chronological Reasoning and Causation
  • F. Civic Participation

Main ideas and student learning goals

  1. Explain that signing the Islip Precinct Articles of Association on May 10, 1775 was an act of treason against the Crown, and describe the personal risk that choice carried.
  2. Analyze how Isaac Thompson took that risk while holding Crown office, and how in February 1776 Islip residents chose their own militia officers and asked the Provincial Congress to commission them.
  3. Use the 1775 census and the militia figures to picture how small and personal these choices were in a precinct of a few hundred people.
  4. Practice telling what a primary source states from what it does not state, using the April 1776 town gun as a test case.

Social studies skills

  • Read a primary source closely and quote from it to support a claim.
  • Explain cause and effect across a short span of time, from Lexington and Concord to Islip's local response.
  • Separate evidence from inference and mark uncertain evidence as uncertain.
  • Weigh a person's choices against the risks and pressures they faced.
  • Use numbers from records to reason about scale and about who was left out.
  • Connect a local decision to a civic idea about taking a public stand.

Rationale

Comes after

  • Lesson 1, in which students learned that Islip has a layered origin on Secatogue and Indigenous land, a 1683 purchase, a 1684 patent, and a 1710 precinct government.
  • A general Grade 7 unit on the growing tensions with Great Britain, the First Continental Congress, and the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.

This lesson focuses on

This lesson brings the national story of independence down to the size of one Long Island farming town. Students see that support for the Revolution was a choice real people made in a town meeting, that the choice was legally treason, and that the man who led the town, Isaac Thompson, took the risk while holding Crown office and, at the same time, held enslaved people at Sagtikos Manor. Students also practice a habit of mind they will use all year: reading a source for exactly what it says and refusing to fill the silence with a guess, using the 1776 town gun as the case.

Prepares students for

  • Lesson 3, on surviving seven years of British occupation, when the same town keeps meeting under the King's required legal dateline.
  • Later work on how the promise of liberty in 1776 reached some people in Islip and not others.

Prior knowledge needed

Students should already know

  • The colonies grew angry over taxes and over Parliament's authority, and delegates met as the Continental Congress.
  • Fighting between colonists and British troops began at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.
  • A militia was a group of local men, not full-time soldiers, who could be called to serve.
  • From Lesson 1, that Islip was a small farming precinct near the Great South Bay with its own town meeting.

Likely misconceptions

  • That everyone in the colonies quickly and firmly agreed to break with Great Britain, when many people were cautious or divided.
  • That signing a pledge in 1775 was a safe, symbolic act, when it was legally treason and could cost a person their property or life.
  • That because a document mentions the militia and a gun in the same year, the gun must have been for the militia.
  • That taking the patriot side meant a person had clean hands, when Isaac Thompson signed a pledge against becoming slaves while holding people in slavery.

Prerequisite skills

  • Reading a short primary-source excerpt and restating it in plain words.
  • Finding a specific quoted phrase inside a passage.
  • Explaining a simple cause-and-effect link between two events.

How these prerequisites are checked

  • During the Do-Now, listen for whether students can name what happened at Lexington and Concord and roughly when.
  • In the guided reading, ask a student to point to the exact words in the Articles that show the signers still hoped for peace, checking close-reading skill.
  • Cold-call one pair to restate the town gun entry in their own words before the sort begins, checking that they can paraphrase a source.

Modifications for a student with an IEP

Hypothetical student: A 12-year-old student with a specific learning disability in reading and a documented processing-speed delay. The student comprehends grade-level ideas when text is chunked and read aloud, but decodes eighteenth-century spelling slowly and loses focus during long independent reading. The student participates well in pairs and when given a clear graphic organizer.

Modifications

  • Provide the Articles of Association and the town gun entry rewritten in a modernized-spelling version printed beside the original, so the student can check meaning against the real words.
  • Chunk each excerpt into two or three sentences with a one-line prompt after each chunk instead of one long block of text.
  • Give a partly completed two-column 'states / does not state' organizer with the first row modeled by the teacher.
  • Pair the student with a supportive partner for the source sort and let the pair produce one shared organizer.
  • Read all primary-source excerpts aloud, and allow the student to answer the exit prompt by speaking into a device or to the teacher rather than only in writing.
  • Offer a small word bank for the exit prompt with the terms treason, evidence, and inference defined in plain language.
  • Extend time on the exit prompt and reduce the required length to two sentences that still show the states-versus-does-not-state distinction.
  • Check in privately once during independent work to confirm the student has found the key quoted phrase before moving on.

Key terms, concepts, and individuals

  • Articles of Association
  • treason
  • freeholder
  • militia
  • Provincial Congress
  • commission
  • Isaac Thompson
  • Benajah Strong

Lesson flow

7 minMotivation

Do-Now + Hook

What the teacher will do

  • Post the Do-Now on the board: 'In April 1775 the men of Islip met, re-elected their supervisor, kept the usual rules about hogs, and settled the town accounts. Write two words for how a town-meeting day like that would feel.'
  • Give students two minutes to write, then take three quick answers out loud (students often say boring, calm, ordinary).
  • Deliver the hook: on April 19, 1775, fifteen days after that quiet meeting, fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, and the news traveled slowly down the coast to Long Island.
  • Pose the framing question and hold it: 'If you lived in a small farming town far from the fighting, would you sign a paper taking a public side? What would you want to know first?'
  • Tell students the aim for the day and post it.

What the students will do

  • Write two words describing an ordinary town-meeting day.
  • Share a word aloud when called on.
  • Turn and tell a partner one thing they would want to know before signing a public pledge in 1775.

How this addresses the aim: The contrast between a routine April meeting and the outbreak of war sets up the aim by making students feel that taking a side was a real, personal decision, not an automatic one.

Scaffolding questions

  • What happened at Lexington and Concord, and about when?
  • How fast would news travel from Massachusetts to Long Island in 1775?

Higher-order questions

  • Why might people in a quiet farming town hesitate before publicly choosing a side in a fight that started somewhere else?

Common Core literacy standards: R1

Assessment: Quick read of student two-word responses and the partner shares to confirm they know what Lexington and Concord was and can name a real risk of signing.

13 minLearning Activity 1

Direct Instruction + Guided Source Reading

So the war has started far away. Now let us watch what the people of Islip actually did about it.

What the teacher will do

  • Project the Articles of Association excerpt and read it aloud, then have students underline the phrase 'resolve never to become slaves' and the phrase about a 'reconciliation between Great Britian and America.'
  • State plainly, in the Town Historian's words, that 'a signature on this paper was an act of treason' against the Crown, and define treason.
  • Share the numbers on the board: the precinct held about 375 people, about 35 eligible men signed the Islip document, and only 5 were listed as refusing. Note that women, enslaved people, free Black people, Native Americans, children, and Quakers could not sign.
  • Introduce Isaac Thompson using a two-line biography: he signed the pledge while serving as a Crown magistrate and precinct official, and in April 1776 his neighbors elected him supervisor. Add that he held enslaved people at Sagtikos Manor, so the words 'never to become slaves' sit uneasily against his own household.
  • Model one line of the 'states / does not state' organizer using the Articles, then hand off to the cooperative activity.

What the students will do

  • Underline the two assigned phrases in the Articles excerpt.
  • Copy the definition of treason into notes.
  • Answer a turn-and-talk: why was signing riskier for Isaac Thompson than for many of his neighbors?
  • Watch the teacher model the organizer and ask one clarifying question if needed.

How this addresses the aim: This segment builds the first two learning goals directly: students learn that signing was treason, and they meet Thompson's dual role and the contradiction of a slaveholder pledging against slavery.

Scaffolding questions

  • What exactly did the signers promise to do?
  • Which words show they still hoped to make peace with Great Britain?
  • What office did Thompson hold that made his signature especially dangerous?

Higher-order questions

  • Why would people in a slaveholding society choose the words 'never to become slaves,' and what is uneasy about that choice given who was working at Sagtikos Manor?
  • About 35 signed out of a precinct of a few hundred, but many people could not sign at all. How does that change how you read the number?

Common Core literacy standards: R1, R2

Assessment: Observe underlining and the turn-and-talk to confirm students can identify the treason risk and explain why Thompson's Crown office raised his personal stakes.

12 minLearning Activity 2

Cooperative Source Analysis: The Militia and the Town Gun

Signing was one choice. Organizing to fight was another. Let us see how Islip did both in a single winter.

What the teacher will do

  • Give each pair two short sources: Isaac Thompson's February 9, 1776 letter to the Provincial Congress, and the April 1776 town minute entry on the gun.
  • Explain the letter in one sentence: Islip residents did not want to be split between the Smithtown and Huntington companies, so they chose their own officers, with Benajah Strong as captain and a company of about 36 or 37 men, and asked the Provincial Congress to grant commissions.
  • Direct pairs to complete the 'states / does not state' organizer for the town gun entry, 'A Gun and the accutriments paid for at Said Town Meeting which are the property of the towns.'
  • Circulate and press pairs who write 'the gun was for the militia' to show where the record says that, guiding them to see it does not.
  • Add a note about Benajah Strong: after occupation began he fled to Connecticut and the British called him a 'notorious rebel,' so choosing to lead the militia carried real cost.

What the students will do

  • Read the two sources in pairs and underline who chose the officers and who was asked to grant the commissions.
  • Fill in the two-column organizer for the town gun: one column for what the record states, one for what it does not state.
  • Decide together whether 'the gun was for the militia' belongs in the 'states' column or the 'does not state' column, and be ready to defend the choice.
  • Add one question they would still need answered before saying what the gun was for.

How this addresses the aim: This segment carries the militia learning goal and the evidence-versus-inference goal at once: students see Islip organizing itself before the occupation, and they test a tempting inference about the gun against what the record actually says.

Scaffolding questions

  • In the letter, who chose the officers, and who did Islip ask to make it official?
  • Read the gun sentence slowly. Exactly what did the town do, and what does it never mention?
  • Which is evidence and which is inference: 'the town bought a gun in 1776' or 'the gun was for the militia'?

Higher-order questions

  • Why would Islip residents want a militia company of their own instead of serving under Smithtown or Huntington officers? What does that say about local identity?
  • The gun was bought two months after Islip asked for militia commissions. Why is a careful historian still not allowed to say the gun was for the militia?

Common Core literacy standards: R1, R9

Assessment: Collect or spot-check the pair organizers; a correct response places 'the gun was for the militia' in the 'does not state' column and lists at least one open question.

5 minClosing

Synthesis + Exit Prompt

Let us pull the choices and the caution together before you leave.

What the teacher will do

  • Restate the aim and take one sentence from two or three pairs on what a signature cost in 1775.
  • Remind students that the 1775 census counted 64 men of 375 residents subject to service, and note that this figure is still under review by the project, so it is a working number.
  • Post the exit prompt and collect it as students leave.

What the students will do

  • Write the exit prompt: 'In one sentence, name one real risk a person in Islip took by signing the Articles of Association. In a second sentence, state one thing the town gun record does NOT tell us.'
  • Hand the exit slip to the teacher on the way out.

How this addresses the aim: The exit prompt checks both halves of the aim in two sentences: the personal cost of taking a side, and the discipline of naming what a source does not say.

Higher-order questions

  • If you had lived in Islip in 1775, what one fact would have most affected your decision to sign or not to sign?

Common Core literacy standards: W1

Assessment: Exit slips are scored for two things: a specific, accurate risk of signing (treason, loss of property or life) and a correct statement of a gap in the town gun record (it does not say the purpose).

Homework

Write two short paragraphs about the April 1776 town gun. The minutes record only that the town paid for 'a Gun and the accutriments' and that it was 'the property of the towns.' In the first paragraph, state only what the record actually tells us. In the second, list the questions you would still need answered before you could say what the gun was for, and explain why a careful historian would not simply assume it was for the militia.

Requirements

  • Paragraph one uses only facts the record states, with no guesses.
  • Paragraph two lists at least two specific questions that remain open.
  • The response ends by explaining, in one sentence, why the 1776 date alone does not prove the gun's purpose.
  • Quote the phrase 'the property of the towns' at least once and use it correctly.

Answer key (for teachers)

  • Paragraph one should say only that at the April 1776 town meeting the town paid for a gun and its equipment and recorded that the gun was town property, owned by the whole town rather than by one person.
  • It should not claim the gun was for the militia, for defense, or for any stated purpose, because the minutes give none.
  • Paragraph two might ask: who used or stored the gun, why the town spent public money on it, whether other records mention it, and whether it connects to the militia company organized two months earlier.
  • The closing sentence should explain that a suggestive date is not the same as a stated purpose, and that connecting the gun to the militia would be an inference the record does not support.

Related pages on this site

  • political choice
  • militia
  • risk
  • civic courage
  • local Revolution
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