Unit 2: Exploration and Colonization

Day 1

We began by adding a new tab: Exploration & Colonization and making our big idea page. We drew a ship to represent the many people traveling to the New World via ship and asked the Big Question: Why do people leave their country and where do they go?

I don't feel this one is as profound as my unit one question, so maybe I can revise it next year, but it's still an important question.








In order to talk about the movement of so many people, kids need to be able to visualize the world. Many fifth graders don't come preloaded with that knowledge, so I break out my hoard of 5 classroom globes, and we hunt down the names of the continents and label this simple map.

Then we make a map key coloring the two continents we're focusing on: North American and Europe.

We add symbols to England and the colonies.

We mark an X for San Augustine later, during the San Augustine mini-lesson.

Day 2

Texas history TEKS call for history to begin at the founding of St. Augustine, so I copied off on white paper a sketch of San Augustine and used map colors to colorize in no more than 30 seconds of furious scribbling.

The picture flaps open, and the content inside reads:

• owned by Spain
• fort
• in Florida
• missionaries

Day 3

Next, I use cards that have pictures of famous colonists or explorers. I put the pictures on cardstock and wrote very brief notes on each person. I hung two signs in the room: Conqueror/ Colonizer.

I gave the students the notes on how to tell the difference (also conquerors come first) and as I displayed each leader's name, the students thought about it, then walked to the sign they thought the person best fit. 

I also asked students to put a star next to the reason they thought would most likely convince them to leave home. Hadn't I run out of time, I would have had them write about this, but c'est la vie.

Day 4

I show parts of a clip of America the Story of Us, Episode 1. The entire documentary is too long, and you need to be careful to cut if off before they go into the details of the people of Jamestown resorting to cannibalism. If you splice the video right, the children can still a recreation of life in Jamestown and what their economy looked like. 

We made notes in the shape of Jamestown. I like to have all the kids stand and count off how many would be dead if we were there. 

Day 5

I showed another segment of America, the Story of Us, showing the struggles of the Pilgrims and the harshness of their climate. We drew our notes in the shape of the Mayflower.

Day 6

Students took home this trunk and drew three non-electronic devices they would take with them if they went packing to the New World with the Pilgrims.

The picture is from a book called History Pockets: Life in Plymouth which you can get on Amazon.

Day 7

We add flaps of two important aspects of colonial government: Mayflower Compact & Virginia House of Burgesses (or House of Burgers or Boogers, according to some of my more humorous children).

The inside of the Mayflower Compact says it is a form of democracy because the people on board all agreed to obey the rules, which they wrote themselves.

The inside of Virginia House of Burgesses says it was the first representative government because the men were elected by the people to make decisions for the good of the colony.

Day 8

I divided the class into groups to study the 3 regions of the colonies. Using Teacher Created Materials as adopted by our district, the students read articles and practiced Reading Fix-Up strategies while pulling the main ideas out onto a large sheet of paper in groups. This took an entire class period to do with me walking around and scaffolding, but the students worked very hard and were very meticulous in their work. Then each group presented their findings, and we colored in the regions of the colonies. We added the economies of each region by invent a map key.

Day 9

We studied conventions of a friendly letter in Language Arts, and then analyzed this letter on Scholastic with audio:

Pilgrim Letter & Audio

Using ideas from here, I scaffolded a letter for my students by brainstorming with them and provided sentence stems. (Remember, I teach bilingual.) For a monolingual classroom, you might use fewer stems. If students have their own ideas or want to add more, go for it!

[to be continued!]