The Jamestown Newsletter

K-12 Objectives | Materials Needed | Procedures | Assessment | Standards

Discipline: U.S. History

Specific Lesson Topic: Daily life and events in the Jamestown colony

Methodology: Primary Sources

Objectives:

Research a chosen Jamestown issue using the on-line materials at Virtual Jamestown and the Jamestown Rediscovery Project.
Develop beginning skills in historical analysis, including the ability to analyze records and data and to formulate historical questions.
Synthesize findings through writing a newsletter article that describes their Jamestown issue.

Materials:

A networked computer lab with an Internet connection
Several dictionaries

Procedures:

1. Introduce students to the following sites:

Jamestown Rediscovery
Virtual Jamestown
* These sites, as well as the topics link below, will open in a new window. To return to this page, close the new window by clicking on the X in the upper right corner.

2. Give students a few possible topics for their stories. Encourage them to think about what settlers would want and need to read about in a newsletter.

3. Have students look for pictures or graphics to accompany their story.

4. Using a basic word processing program that will allow graphics and or pictures to be inserted, have students work together to design a newsletter that incorporates the entire class' stories. It is useful to divide students into groups with specific tasks, e.g. naming the newsletter and designing a graphic, laying out the articles and images, checking for grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Assessment for K-12:

Once students read their completed class newsletter, have each person write a letter home to their family in Britain that synthesizes several of their peers' stories from the newsletter. Encourage them to draw some generalizations about life in Jamestown.

Standards:

National History Standards: Standards in Historical Thinking

Standard 2: Historical Comprehension
Standard 3: Historical Analysis and Interpretation
Standard 4: Historical Research Capabilities

This module created by Sonja Czarnecki of the University of Virginia.