The Library of Congress holds a delightful book (copyrighted in 1875, published in 1883) titled Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill. The text is a poem written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and it is accompanied by H.W. McVikar's beautiful illustrations. Teachers of elementary school students (and possibly middle school) can project the book directly from the Library's website or download a PDF version of the book and project that version to a class, while reading the text aloud. For those pages that appear out of focus, here's the complete text from Wikisource.
Page Nine, Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill
For an easy-to-understand introduction to Bunker Hill, the 1775 battle in which New England soldiers faced the British army in a pitched battle for the first time during the American Revolution, here is a 10-minute animated video from Simple History. I think it would serve as an excellent lead-in to build context before students hear and view Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill.
I know there are thousands more primary sources in the Library of Congress for the American Revolution, such as this set from the U.S. History Primary Source Timeline for the American Revolution 1763-1783, but sometimes we just need a real simple introduction for our students, especially our younger students.
Oddly, as I watched the video, I kept thinking of the comparisons between the battle of Bunker Hill and the Ukrainian army during the first days of their war against the Russians in 2022. I wonder what poems and picture books will come out of the current armed conflict. History repeats itself.
3 - 5 6 - 8 Social Studies/History Bunker Hill teaching strategies
Why, that's a charming story poem, with its sly twist of an ending! I'm surprised that I, growing up in the Boston area, never heard it before. I'm looking forward to watching the video, too.
I used this in class last week. Thank you, Mary Johnson for sharing this resource. I put the story book pages on the big screen, read aloud from your complete text link, and I gave the students a chart with three columns. They had to complete a minimum of one of the three columns per set of pages.
We had great discussion when we went over our charts as a class. Fun stuff!
Super lesson idea Carrie Veatch ! Thanks for the share!