Harbor Perspectives

This worksheet helps students in Grades 4 and 5 build reading comprehension, historical understanding, perspective-taking, and critical thinking skills by examining multiple viewpoints surrounding the Boston Tea Party. Students read three short first-person accounts-from a merchant, a sailor, and a patriot-and analyze how each person’s role, priorities, and experiences shape their interpretation of the same historical event.

Learning Goals

• Understanding Multiple Perspectives (Grades 4-5) – Students identify how different individuals experienced and interpreted the Boston Tea Party.
• Reading Comprehension – Learners answer questions that require close reading and attention to key details.
• Causes of the American Revolution – The activity highlights economic, political, and social motivations behind colonial resistance.
• Analyzing Motivation and Tone – Students examine concerns such as money, rights, job security, and protest.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed by educators to align with elementary social studies and ELA standards.
• Engaging First-Person Format – Short narratives help students connect emotionally and intellectually to historical events.
• Flexible Classroom Use – Works well for independent practice, guided reading, discussion-based lessons, or assessment.
• Builds Historical Empathy – Encourages students to understand history through the eyes of people with differing interests.
• Low-Prep Printable – Ready for classroom or homeschool use.

This Harbor Perspectives worksheet helps students see the Boston Tea Party as a complex event experienced differently by people with unique roles and motivations. By analyzing tone, viewpoint, and context, learners strengthen comprehension, historical reasoning, and critical thinking while gaining a deeper understanding of the causes of the American Revolution.

This worksheet is part of our The Boston Tea Party Worksheets collection.