Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
Claire Heider
TESL 220, Dr. Stallions
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Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
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Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
Introduction:
This resource guide will provide teachers with instructional techniques that can be used
to help English Language Learners understand and appreciate the subject of Social Studies more,
particularly while learning about the Jamestown settlement. Specifically, this guide will include
instructions and activities that can be used to keep English Language Learners engaged and
interested in learning material about the Jamestown settlement. This guide will include how to
effectively use these activities in the classroom and will include examples.
First, this guide will address the learning outcomes of the activities. It will discuss how
the student will use these activities to understand the Jamestown settlement. Secondly, the guide
will include instructions on how the activities can be used in the classroom. The resource guide
will then include some work samples to depict what the end result of the activities should look
like. After this section is the annotated bibliography, which includes the sources that were used
in order for me to complete this guide. The last section of the resource guide is the summary
reflection, where I talk about my reflections on this project.
I decided to research how to appropriately teach Social Studies, particularly the
Jamestown settlement because Social Studies is the s ubject that I want to teach to elementary
school students. I chose the topic of the Jamestown settlement because when I looked on the
Virginia Standards of Learning website, they focus a lot on Virginia’s history in third, fourth and
fifth grades, which are my current top three grade levels that I am interested in teaching.
While trying to find sources on teaching Social Studies in multi-cultural classrooms, I
came across an interesting and true idea that
Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
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The field of social studies poses a variety of challenges for language
minority children. Often the instruction they receive is incomprehensible and the
assessment is inappropriate. Social studies classes tend to be heavily dependent
on the extensive use of literacy skills, and both reading and writing assessments
frequently involve genre and sentence structures that are unfamiliar to English
language learners (ELLs) (Ovando & Collier, 1998).
I found this interesting because Social Studies, at least when I was growing up in
elementary school, Social Studies did not seem very challenging, even for those students whose
first language was not English. I do not know if it is just because that was a long time ago or
because I did not see the full picture and get the full experience as the ELL students did. I do not
doubt that it is true now because so much of what students have to do in school is reading and
writing based and if they do not possess even the most basic skills that are associated with
reading and writing, it will create an environment of struggle and hatred of learning for most, if
not all of their educational career.
Learning Outcomes:
The first activity in this guide involves taking the students on a field trip to the
Jamestown settlement in Williamsburg, Virginia. During this activity, the students will have the
opportunity to get a guided tour around the settlement and ask the tour g uide any questions that
they might have on the subject itself. Another positive aspect of the fieldtrip besides engaging
the students in interesting material is that it gets them out of the classroom and lets them be more
independent. Both ELL learners and non-ELL learners alike will enjoy going on a field trip to
Jamestown.
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The next activity mentioned in this guide would probably be done right before I introduce
the unit on Jamestown. In this activity, I would show my students a map of the world and help
them locate England and Virginia and write them on paper. On the map of the world, I would
have the students move pictures of ships from England to Jamestown while talking about some
of the important events surrounding this movement. I would show them pictures of English
settlers and have them write important words, such as John Smith, Pocahontas, James River, etc.
on chart paper. Then I would have a conversation with students about how they or their family
members came to America and ask them to compare their arrival with that of the English settlers.
(Samway & Taylor, 2007).
The final activity that is mentioned in the resource guide is a student created theater
activity and a reflective writing assignment, in which students write from John Smith,
other colonists, or Indians perspectives in their diary. In the theater activity, the students
will choose six of their classmates to portray six different people that played important
roles in the Jamestown settlement. The six characters are: John Smith, Pocahontas,
Chief Powhatan, John Rolfe, Captain Christopher Newport, and lastly King James I. The
remaining students in the class will serve as coaches, advisors, and evaluators. Their jobs
will include praise and constructive advice to readers (W ork or Starve).
Instructional Strategies:
I was able to find six teaching strategies that can be used in teaching this unit on
the Jamestown settlement. Those six strategies are: first hand knowledge, interaction,
critical thinking, memorization, thinking through pictures, and writing skills. The
activity that demonstrates first hand knowledge is the fieldtrip that the class takes to the
Jamestown settlement in Williamsburg. This strategy of first hand knowledge is
Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
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beneficial to ELL learners because they are actively learning new material as they go on
in the field trip. Interaction is shown through the theater activity, where the students act
out the different people that were of importance to the Jamestown settlement. This
process would help ELL learners because it helps break through the language barrier and
shows them that they can learn. Critical thinking is shown through the map activity
because the students are learning where each place is located, the relationship that exists
between both places, and the significance in correlation to each other. This will help
ELL learners because it serves as another guide for them to learn the material. The
strategy of thinking through pictures is also represented through the map activity because
there are pictures, which helps the students relate the information that they are learning.
Writing skills are shown in the diary writing activity because the students will create their
own thoughts from using another individual’s persona. This will help ELL learners
because it is a more creative way for them to show what they know or have learned about
the Jamestown settlement.
Work Samples
The importance to English Language Learners of the field trip to Jamestown is
that they gain knowledge by physically being able to travel to the place they are learning
about in school. Having this personal interaction with the Jamestown setting will give
the students a deeper connection to the material than what can be taught in the classroom.
This can be perfectly illustrated by Eleanor Roosevelt when she said, The purpose of life
is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for
newer and richer experience (Robertson, 2009). That is just what English Language
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Learners get to experience while on field trips. They get to explore their surroundings
and recognize what kind of an impact they have on their learning.
The theater activity is important in three major ways. To start with it is engaging
for all students, not just the English Language Learners in the classroom. It also
generates in depth knowledge of a character and creates a sort of connection to a
particular character that is felt by the student. Another tool that comes from the theater
activity is that it promotes critical thinking when the students try to portray the scene or a
certain theme in their performance.
Thinking through pictures is helpful for English Language Learners because it
helps them get over the language barrier with the other students in the classroom. Little or
no talking is involved. English Language Learners can use pictures to represent their
ideas or knowledge about a certain topic when they cannot carry on a conversation about
it with others. An example of this activity is below:
Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
(Living in Williamsburg, 2011).
In the classroom I would use post it notes to mark the locations of England and
Jamestown. I would also use a Sharpie to trace the colonists voyage to Virginia. This
would serve as another visual aid to the students in my classroom.
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Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners
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Annotated Bibliography:
Cultures in Contact, Jamestown and Yorktown Foundation (1992)
http://www.historyisfun.org/PDFbooks/Cultures_in_Contact.pdf
This website contains information about both the Jamestown and Yorktown settlements.
I used it in this resource guide to get information about the Jamestown settlement. I
would use it a lot during teaching to find out any new and current information about the
exhibits at the settlement and to organize plans for the field trip.
Hirsch, C., & Supple, D.B. (1996). 61 Cooperative Learning Activities in ESL. Portland,
Maine: J. Weston Walch.
I did not use this source a lot in my resource guide but it has a lot of helpful tools and
strategies about how to teach ESL students in your classroom.
Living in Williamsburg, Virginia. (2011, July 29). Retrieved from:
http://livinginwilliamsburgvirginia.blogspot.com/2011/07/jamestown-settlement-replicaship.html
I used this picture in my paper. I would also use it in my classroom so that the students
understand the voyage that the colonists took to get to Jamestown.
Ovando, C.J., & Collier, V.P. (1998). Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in
Multicultural Contexts. (2 ed.) United States of America: McGraw-Hill.
This book had a lot of valuable information that I would definitely use as a teacher.
Robertson, K. (2009). Successful Field Trips with English Language Learners. Retrieved from
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http://www.readingrockets.org/article/31553
I used the Eleanor Roosevelt quote from this website but it also contains very valuable
information about how to make field trips valuable for both English Language Learners and
students whose first language is English.
Samway, K.D., & Taylor, D. (2007). Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies that
Work K-5. Scholastic Teaching Resources.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/teaching-english-language-learners-strategies-work
This source was helpful in planning my resource guide because it gave different
strategies to teach English Language Learners. I used their strategy of using maps of Europe and
Virginia and showing the voyage in this resource guide.
Work or Starve Jamestown Colony Lesson Plan. Teacher Created Materials INC.
http://tahg2.wikispaces.com/file/view/Work+or+Starve+-+Jamestown.pdf
I liked the theater activity so much from this source that I decided to include it as
one of my activities in this resource guide. If I end up teaching the Jamestown settlement
in my own classroom, I will definitely be performing this activity with my students.
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Summary Reflection
Once I got started with this resource guide, I enjoyed putting it together. I found some
valuable information as to how to teach Social Studies to English Language Learners, and
in particular the Jamestown settlement of 1607. I will definitely use this in my classroom
as a teacher because this is the subject that I feel I have a real pas sion for and a strong
desire to want to teach to my students. History has fascinated me for many years, ever
since I was in elementary school really. I remember taking field trips with my teachers to
places like Jamestown, Monticello, Mount Vernon, and many more around Virginia and
learning about the people that lived there or the historical significance behind it and the
many contributions brought on the United States of America.
When I first started this resource guide, I felt worried because not only was it a
big assignment, but also because of the little information that I could find on specifically
teaching the Jamestown settlement to English Language Learners. However, as I dug
deeper into my material I found that some of the books separated their chapters into how
to teach different subjects and one of those chapters dealt with teaching Social Studies. I
also found some very helpful web resources and I will definitely use the information that
I have gained from this experience when teaching in my classroom. I am now faithful in
my abilities to teach English Language Learners in my classroom. I can see them being
actively engaged and having fun learning in my classroom through the use of hands on
activities and letting them think for themselves. I honestly cannot wait to get into the
classroom and start now!