American History Lesson Plan
Grade 8 US History

 Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

 Objectives: 

·        Analyze interactions between English and Native Americans in Virginia at the time of the Jamestown settlement.

·        Describe the native culture and people resident in the Virginia area.

·        Examine the Pocahontas myth.

 Materials:

·        Extracts from Captain John Smith’s “General Historie of Virginia”,

http://www.nationalcenter.org/SettlementofJamestown.html

 ·        John White’s engravings entitled “The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in That Parte of America Now called Virginia”

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1009b

 ·        Jamestown Online Adventure: interactive game on the settlement of Jamestown including extracts from the Company Charter to found the colony

http://www.historyglobe.com/jamestown/

 ·        Engravings from Captain Smith’s “True Relation” http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jmack/algonqin/smith.htm 

·        Portrait of Pocahontas in English court dress and short biography

http://www.apva.org/history/pocahont.html 

Activities:

 Day One

Introduce the lesson by asking each group to list as many details/facts about Pocahontas that they know on a word web graphic organizer.  Pass the web from student to student as each one adds a detail.

 Discuss what the students know about Pocahontas and where they got this information from.  Explain that you are about to examine the real Pocahontas, her people and their interactions with the colonists at Jamestown.

 Read the passage in your textbook introducing the Jamestown colony.  Then have each group read an extract from Book III of the “General Historie” by John Smith perhaps broken up into sections

·        Conditions at Jamestown and Captain Smith’s capture

·        How he was brought before the king and his life saved by Pocahontas

·        How Captain Smith was initiated into the tribe and returned to Jamestown

 Have each group explain what they have read and learnt from their extract using highlighted quotations, on a transparency of the text for the overhead projector.

View the engravings from Captain Smith’s books.

Wrap up the class with a discussion on the reliability of the eyewitness whose testimony you have just been reading.

 Day Two

Explain that today the class is going to learn more about Pocahontas’ people by examining etchings made in the late 16^th Century. 

Distribute one or two images with their accompanying text to each group from “The True Pictures and Fashions” by John White.  Read the inscription to introduce the documents to the class.

 Have each group prepare a presentation to explain what the pictures reveal about the people of Virginia.  Let the groups present their finding. 

Wrap up with a discussion of John White’s attitude towards the people he draws and describes.  What impression does he give his readers of these people and their lands?  Why? How are these different or similar to the impressions we get from Captain Smith?

Day Three

Project the Portrait of Pocahontas in English clothing to the class, and discuss what it implies about what became of Pocahontas later in her life.  Explain to the class the rest of her biography.

Show a clip from the Disney movie, dealing with Captain Smith’s capture.  Discuss how the Natives and Europeans are depicted. Have the groups discuss and report on how Disney have changed the image of Pocahontas and her people from that described by John White and John Smith. Point out that we don’t have accounts of these events from Pocahontas or her father. 

 Additional activity: 

Have students play the Jamestown Online Adventure.

 TEKS:

8.1c, 8.2a, 8.30a, 8.30d,