What Would You Ask Thomas Jefferson If You Could?

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Wednesday, February 8, was an historic occasion in Scottie Fowler's fourth-grade class.

Professionally dressed talk show hosts pulled out the stops and conducted some of their most important interviews.

The media-savvy "Isabella's Show" promoted its journalistic coup, a much-anticipated "live interview" with John and Abigail Adams, with patriotic graphics for its original segment titled "Bringing Back the Past."

The historic guests looked fresh, despite their centuries-old absence from the public scene. They answered their interviewers' questions with directness and needed no notes to prompt their ancient memories.

The classroom project was a fine example of student inquiry methods in the Lower School.

Students worked in pairs to choose an historical person to interview. They researched the answers to three required questions and developed at least three additional questions and answers of their own. Then they scripted and memorized their historic performances.

"Students had to ask each interviewee what was your role in the American Revolution, were you a Loyalist or Patriot and why, and what were some of the risks you took?" noted Ms. Fowler. One of the IB attitudes promoted by the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program (PYP) is risk-taking, and students are encouraged to recognize the risks that real people and fictional characters take in their lives.

The interviews incorporated technological innovations that would have been completely unknown during the interviewees' lifetimes. One group of students prepared a PowerPoint backdrop for its interviews and projected it onto the classroom's SMART Board.

So what kinds of questions did the media celebrities in grade 4 ask their guests from the past?

Abigail Adams was asked if she approved or disapproved of the rights she enjoyed during her lifetime as a woman.

"It was alright," she responded. "I just thought women should have been able to own property."

Thomas Jefferson was asked about his leisure pastimes. "I played the violin and I loved to play duets with my wife," he revealed. "I also liked to invent things, like a folding ladder, a swivel chair, a revolving table, a seven-day clock, and moving pens."

Revolutionary War heroine Emily Geiger brought along a visual aid for her television audience.

It was an antiqued copy of the invitation to her wedding in 1789. She retrieved the copy from the Internet.