Digging Deeper into the First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in America is a time for students and teachers to take a little break from school to reflect on the history of our country and to give thanks for all that we have. For many, it’s a time to take a vacation where we eat WAY too much and get up at crazy hours of the morning to get a head start on the Christmas shopping! In an attempt to help students understand the origin and the meaning of the holiday, many teachers teach Thanksgiving lessons during the time before the holiday. Some teachers choose to focus on the gratitude associated with the season, hoping to instill some of that thankfulness in their students. Other teachers choose to focus more on the historical events in the United States that inspired the holiday. Interactive internet resources can bring the classic study of pilgrims and Indians to a new level. We can do more than make neat hats and hand turkeys!

My search of The Gateway to 21st Century Skills for Thanksgiving activities led me to a couple of good resource collections that I want to share with you. The first group of activities is from The Learning Network: Teaching and Learning with the New York Times. These current event based activities extend the topic of Thanksgiving in many unconventional ways. Their lessons are divided into three categories: food and meals, history and culture, and politics and current events. Some lesson topics include the biological effects of overeating, challenges of cranberry farming, American Indian Art, and considering the phenomenon of Black Friday. The site also includes printables, related New York Times articles, and older primary sources for student research.

Scholastic has also put together an extensive compilation of First Thanksgiving activities. Their “Everything for Thanksgiving” site includes lesson plans, interactive web tools, archives of live chats and webcasts, book recommendations, and a virtual field trip to a re-creation of the Plymouth plantation (or Plimoth, as the pilgrims would have spelled it). We tried out the virtual field trip and the virtual tour of the Mayflower. They were both very nicely done. The lesson plans include guides to help teachers use the online tools in classrooms of all different levels.

Using Plimoth Plantation’s “You are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving” site is like taking your students to an interactive museum exhibit, without all the hassle. The site allows students to view a letter written by a Plymouth colonist, the only eyewitness account of the 1621 harvest celebration, including a translation and a historian’s notes. They can tour a typical colonist’s home and see what daily life was like for members of the Wampanoag tribe. The investigation includes an online tool for students to create their own mini museum exhibit (a printable poster). You might also choose to use this activity as a starting point for a larger investigation. If you do that, you could consider assigning a slide show (try Animoto), a glog, or something we recently discovered: a Museum Box as a culminating project. We found Museum Box in an iLearn Technology blog post. Thanks to Kelly Tenkely for always sharing her finds!

I hope this Thanksgiving season finds your class full of grateful students who are ready to learn all about how the holiday started. Between these collections, Joann’s picks for this week, and our suggestions on Facebook and Twitter, you will be sure to find a Thanksgiving activity that will tie nicely into your plans.

~Peggy's Corner - 11/19/2010~

Giving Thanks

I pretty much haven’t met a holiday that I didn’t like, but Thanksgiving is kind of special. It’s relatively low-key, and the notion of taking some time to really appreciate what we have – and to give thanks for it – is a winning notion. Each day most of us relentlessly multitask in order to wring the most benefit out of every possible millisecond. Some of us juggle work that needs to be reviewed and graded, attend to student needs, coach sports teams, and oversee a host of other activities. Many of us live from deadline to deadline (and paycheck to paycheck) and generally run on all cylinders from dawn to late night. It’s hard – modern life is hardly the days of leisure predicted by 19th century futurists. Yet despite the stress and the constant need to always be “on”, available, and present, most of us have much to be thankful for.

Yesterday in the classroom, the teacher asked her students to write down what they were thankful for. There were some of the predictable third grade answers, such as “candy,” and “my Xbox,” but some were quietly profound. “I’m thankful for my granpa’s keemotherpy” was one. Another student wrote that she was thankful for her family – not an uncommon entry in the class, except that her father had recently rejoined his family after several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the perfect time of the year to perhaps ask your students what they are thankful for. What are you grateful for?

In addition to lessons that ask students to consider the concept of gratitude, many schools also focus on traditional Thanksgiving themes, such as the Pilgrims, Wampanoags, the Mayflower, and so forth. The Gateway has a rich collection of lessons and activities that can be used in the week leading up to Thanksgiving; three lessons are highlighted below. The resources that I’ve featured this week ask students to think about Thanksgiving in different ways and perhaps from a different perspective than they have previously – a good pre-holiday exercise in critical thinking skills! As always, I’ll be featuring a multitude of lessons, activities, and other K-12 resources from The Gateway and other entities on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Please take a look.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Become a Thanksgiving Historian
Subjects: US History, Technology, Research skills
Grade: 2
Students may be surprised to find out that some ideas they have about the history of Thanksgiving are actually myths. In this lesson, students become true "Thanksgiving historians" by completing a Venn diagram about the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims with information acquired through Internet searches. This is a great lesson to help students develop online research skills, as well as separate historical fact from fiction. This resource is a product of the Alabama Learning Exchange (ALEX), an award-winning education portal that provides best practices, lesson plans, and educational podcasts. This lesson is aligned to Alabama Content Standards.

Thanksgiving: A Turkey’s Point of View
Subjects: Writing
Grade: 3-5
Things may not always be as they first appear! The purpose of this lesson is to expose students to several stories from different perspectives. They will compare and contrast different points of view on the same topic, and write a story from a character's point of view. This lesson by Laura Beeler is part of HotChalk Learning, a portal that provides an online learning management system and lesson plans to educators.

Thanksgiving Mourning
Subjects: English, US History
Grade: 6-12
Much of the Thanksgiving story focuses on a peaceful, cross-cultural exchange between the "Pilgrims and Indians." While it's true that the Wampanoag and the Planters shared in a harvest celebration, within fifty years, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people. In this activity, students will review two written works by Native American authors. They will examine how diverse groups can perceive shared experiences differently, and review commentary from indigenous writers about Thanksgiving. This lesson is a product of Teaching Tolerance, a division of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving inter-group relations, and supporting equitable school experiences for students. They also provide free educational materials to teachers and other school practitioners in the U.S. and abroad.

~Joann's Picks - 11/19/2010~