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| What did
Europeans see when they looked at the New World and the Native Americans? A Document Based Activity by Peter Pappas |
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This lesson improves content reading comprehension
and critical thinking skills with an engaging array of source documents –
including journal entries, letters, maps, and illustrations. It examines
European views of Native American and the New World in the Age of Exploration.
While it is a rather one-sided account, the documents also reveal a great deal
about the cultural "lenses" that the Europeans "looked though." I developed this lesson to assist high school history teachers working with struggling readers. I wanted to show them how they could scaffold learning so that all students could participate in doing the work of historians. |
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I built the lesson around a theme which
was central to their curriculum. It was designed as an essential
question that would engage students in reflection about how they
allowed prejudice to color their perceptions. I selected images
which could be “decoded” by students with a minimum of background
knowledge. The source material contains twenty-five documents in text and image formats. I modernized historic accounts at two reading levels – 5th and 8th grade. Each contains the same twenty five documents. A series of six exercises accompanies the lesson to guide students through the process of extracting information from the documents and constructing their own answers to the essential question.
Documents
printable / viewable Also included are six activity Worksheets printable / viewable pdfs Homefront America in WW II Improve content reading comprehension with an engaging array of source documents framed around essential questions that link the past and present. |
Adam and Eve in America
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with Documents Visit my website Content Reading Strategies That Work
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