taxation

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Home : 2002 : December : 29

taxation
By Ramie

I taught my 5th graders about taxation without representation first hand. Before teaching the unit I began giving each students plastic tokens for good behavior, good answers, participation, etc. They could then use their
tokens to buy candy at the end of the day. After a few days of this I began taxing bathroom trips during class. As the week progressed I added other taxes as well such as chair tax, talking without rasing their hand tax, tax for not calling me queen etc.
The tax that raised the most uproar was the stamp tax. Students must come an pay me one token to recieve my royal stamp on all

papers that must be graded. Any paper without the "royal" stamp would not be "legal" and would not be graded.

The kids could repeal any tax by creating a petition signed by every member of the class. I did tell them their might be consequences for signing the petition.

The kids separated themselves into three groups- those who were loyal to me and would do what I asked, those who didn't care, and those who protested.

On Friday I introduced the causes of the American Revolution and the taxes. The kids were very interested and could relate to the colonist's cause. Many of them even said, "Hey, that's what you did to us!"

It was really fun and the kids learned quite a bit about the feelings and emotions of the colonists because they had experienced those same feelings first hand.