Gaston+County

Ron Olson

Gaston Catawba Lincoln Gates

1. Kings Mountain Battlefield in the county 2.Concordia College 3. Confederate Monument 4. Historic Gates County Courthouse, built 1836

To teach a lesson, I think the famous Kings Mountain battle in southern North Carolina would be a good topic to focus on. The content important here would not necessarily be the battle itself, but the effects it had on the American Revolution and war with Great Britain. The battle of Kings Mountain was a decisive Patriot victory, and several prominent Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover, mentioned the battle as one of the most significant in early American history. From the battle on, the Americans turned the tide of the war with Britain and gained confidence to push forward in their efforts for independence.

For this lesson, I would have students research the Kings Mountain battle and the time period around it for the American Revolutionary War. The end product of their research would be for students to write historical narratives, either in the viewpoint of the Americans or the British. Again, the main focus here for learning would be the students' understanding of the Kings Mountain battle and its effect on the Revolutionary War as a whole. Even though the battle itself was not large by any means, the fact is that it was very significant, and I would hope that students would show interest with such an important battle being close to home. As a teacher, I would preface the lesson by teaching some information about the battle's period in the Revolutionary War, and of course this lesson would be taught in the Revolutionary War unit period of class.

I would know about the student's learning based on their historical narratives, and whether or not they accurately represented each side's (the Americans or the British) feelings and morale after the battle of Kings Mountain. For example, if I received a narrative on a British General and how happy he was after the battle, then I would know that something went wrong and no real learning took place. Along with the historical narratives, I might think about having students teach each other about the two sides of the war, and what was going on around the time of the battle (circa 1780). One group would be the British, and the other American. Students could speak either from the soldiers' viewpoints, or even as regular citizens in both countries. This sharing would not necessarily be graded, but rather would serve as a method to enrich the learning and cement the newly gained knowledge on the Revolutionary War, and the small, but significant, battle of Kings Mountain.