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Time Travel with Primary Sources: Using authentic documents and artifacts will make history and literature burst with life for your students - sample lesson for Thanksgiving
Instructor, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Monica Edinger
One of the most exciting ways for kids to connect with the past is with primary sources. Letters, diaries, household tools, and maps function as time machines, carrying students back to long-ago eras. When these voices, images, and artifacts of the past are before them, children have an easier time imagining faraway times and people as real. A fourth-grade teacher for many years, I have used primary sources in both social studies and literature. My students have used oral histories to discover why people came to America, studied photographs to see the change in a local street over time, and used household objects to build an image of what daily life was like for people long ago. These firsthand examples are ideal to stimulate and invigorate student learning.
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A 1622 Journal of the Pilgrims
One of my favorite primary-source lessons is one I do during a study of the Pilgrims. I use an excerpt from a journal published in 1622, two years after the Mayflower sailed to the New World. The book's full title is A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceeding of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England By Certain English Adventurers both Merchants and Others. It is more commonly know as Mourt's Relation, after the name at the end of a letter in the book explaining the purpose of the book's publication. Most of what is actually known about the Pilgrims and their settlement in America comes from this book, published in London to encourage more people to join the Pilgrims at their Cape Cod settlement. The drama of the sea journey, the first sight of land, deciding where to build their homes, meeting Native Americans, and the harvest feast on which Thanksgiving is based are all in this small publication.
My Goals for This Lesson
My overriding goal when teaching with primary sources is for my students to feel as if they are back in time themselves; that the people they are learning about are as real as they are. I want them to think historically about what it was like for these people so long ago. With this particular lesson, I want to teach the kids techniques-such as annotation-to help them read this challenging material. These are techniques that they also will be able to use repeatedly in the future. I also want to develop their research skills as they move beyond the journal excerpt to learn more.
The Journal Version I Use
Many versions of Mourt's Relation are available both online and in print. However, because there was no standard spelling in 1622, the same word could be, and was often, spelled several different ways on the same page (e.g., Plimoth, Plymoth, and Plymouth). Punctuation was used far less than it is today. To top it off, there were many different styles of handwriting and type which can make reading original manuscripts quite difficult. For these reasons, most versions of Mourt's Relation available for student use have been edited to reflect current conventions for spelling, type, and punctuation. One day, however, I found a version without such corrections. This version felt much more real with the odd spelling and type, something I thought would be equally compelling for my students to study.
Step One: A Guided Reading
For the first session, I make copies of the first few pages of the journal for each of my students. (They're combined onto one page for you to use as a reproducible.) I then enlarge one copy to chart size (you could do this as an overhead), and I model how I would translate the excerpt into modern English. I begin by reading and rereading a line and think out loud as I try to make sense of it. I might say: " 'A Relation or Journal' Do you see how they are using an I instead of a J in journal? I'll highlight that and add it to our list of things to watch out for. I wonder what's meant here by relation. Do you think they mean aunts and uncles? Maybe they mean to relate as in to tell?"
The children and I determine that the word relation here means "relating or telling a story." I continue, reading aloud and highlighting some of the words and phrases that need translating, continuing to think aloud about what they might be. I might say: "Do you see something else funny about the spelling of journal? They added an extra I on to the end of journal." I write a note on the side of the page and say to the students: "See how I highlighted 'Iournall' in the text, then wrote our spelling of it, 'journal', on the side? That is known as annotating."
After modeling a few lines of text, I ask the children to try it on their own, and ask for volunteers to show us, on the enlarged page, how they did it. As patterns start to emerge, I write them down on the side under the heading, "Tips for Reading Mourt's Relation." (See Page 22.) As soon as I sense that all the children understand what to do, I have them continue the reading in collaborative groups or individually, and I give them assistance as needed.
Step Two: Illustrating a Quote
Once the children have completed the translation, we review it together to be sure each child has a clear understanding of the information. Next, I point out how the information is familiar to us because it is similar to what we know of as Thanksgiving. The kids' next task is to select a quote from the journal excerpt and illustrate it, which requires some research. There are no photographs of the Mayflower, and many well-known images of the ship and its passengers are historically incorrect. For example, Pilgrims didn't dress in dark clothes with buckled shoes and hats, although that's the familiar image we have of them. I keep many children's books with more authentic illustrations in my classroom for the kids to use, along with their imaginations, to illustrate their quotes. Finished illustrations are displayed on a "Pilgrim Time Line" on a bulletin board. The children love figuring our where their illustrations should go. Before the Mayflower set sail? During the voyage?
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