Thomas Paine's political pamphlet, Common Sense, was an enormously impactful document of the Revolutionary Era. It stoked the fires of revolution and provided intellectual ammunition to revolutionaries across the colonies. Learn more and engage students with premade activities with Storyboard That!
Common Sense Vocabulary activity - Have students select new vocabulary from quotes and illustrate their meaning!
Storyboard Text
Vocabulary Term With Definition
An organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.
society (noun)
Passage From Common Sense
"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."
Visualization of the Vocabulary Term
Town Meeting
We should plan a town-wide picnic for next Saturday!
Great idea, Mike!
The political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states
government (noun)
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
Mr. Jones, you have been found guilty of arson and will be sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Arousing disgust or aversion; offensive or repulsive:
repugnant (adjective)
"It is repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things, to all examples from former ages, to suppose, that this continent can longer remain subject to any external power."
Although I am thousands of miles away...I'm in charge!