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Create 8 Independence Day Activities With Formative
Christy Walters
June 4, 2025
When do you teach about Independence Day in your classroom? Whether you talk about it during a relevant social studies lesson or in summer school, how do your students react? Chances are, they get more excited talking about picnics and fireworks than talking about the Declaration of Independence. But what if you could change that?
Today, we’re showing you how to use Independence Day activities to get your students thinking about history in brand-new ways.
[8 historical activities to add to your Independence Day lessons](id-library)
We’ve collected eight primary sources you can use to teach about the Fourth of July in your classroom. They each have an interactive activity from the shared Formative Library to keep students engaged and make lesson planning even easier.
You can customize these activity templates by adjusting settings like randomizing the order of questions and answer choices or awarding partial credit for specific questions. You can also modify the existing questions or add content to fit your classroom’s needs for a fuller, more comprehensive assessment.
Newsela Social Studies subscribers have access to even more great features that make teaching and sharing primary source texts easier than ever. Help students break down these documents at five different reading levels to dig into the content without the barriers of advanced 18th-century language.
On December 16, 1773, American colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act. This act was an example of what the colonists called “taxation without representation,” where the British government could tax the colonists without their say or any way to refuse to pay.
Students can read an article about the incident from a 1773 issue of the “Boston Globe” to learn more about one of the events that led to the American Revolution.
In 1776, the colonists adopted the Declaration of Independence, their official plea to become independent from British rule. Within the document, colonists gave reasons for their assertion of independence and articulated three fundamental rights of all people: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, known as the first constitution, in 1777 to establish the United States’ first national government. Federalists found this document to promote a weak central government, which led them to draft and propose the new Constitution we still have today.
Before all 13 states ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781, Alexander Hamilton had time to review and critique the messaging. In 1780, he wrote a letter to Revolutionary leader James Duane expressing his concerns about the unfair division of federal and state powers in the Articles.
Like Hamilton, George Washington felt the Articles of Confederation could be improved. In 1785, he wrote a letter to James Warren, president of the third Provincial Congress, criticizing the Articles and the nation's lack of a strong central government.
On September 17, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution. Less than a year later, on June 21, 1788, it became the official framework of the United States government when New Hampshire became the ninth of 13 states to ratify it into law. Today, the Constitution still serves as the document that lists and protects the rights, liberties, and freedoms of all U.S. citizens.
On December 15, 1791, Congress adopted the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. Anti-Federalists pushed for these amendments, claiming the Constitution didn’t have necessary limits on government power. They wanted these safeguards added to the document to protect individual liberties and state and local government powers.
In 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke at an Independence Day ceremony in New York, where he criticized the United States for its support of slavery. He argued against celebrating a day of independence when so many people in the country weren’t free.
[Create an engaging Independence Day activity with Formative](id-formative)
The Formative Library has a variety of free, pre-made activities developed by our curriculum experts and educators like you. You can use these templates as-is or customize them to fit your instructional needs. Use the library’s sort filters to browse content by subject and grade level to find what you want.
Create your own activity if you don’t see a template that matches your instructional needs! Log in to your Formative account and choose how to customize your lesson or assessment. You can create new slides with various multimedia, including audio and video, import content from Google, or enhance a PDF or existing document.
Don’t have a Formative account yet? Sign up for Formative for free today to start creating activities for Independence Day and beyond!
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