Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 1

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1 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 1 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners Claire Heider TESL 220, Dr. Stallions

2 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 2 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 subject 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

3 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 3 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 guide 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.

4 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 4 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 (Work 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

5 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 5 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

6 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 6 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:

7 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 7 (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.

8 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 8 Annotated Bibliography: Cultures in Contact, Jamestown and Yorktown Foundation (1992) 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: 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

9 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 9 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. 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. 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.

10 Teaching Jamestown and Social Studies for English Language Learners 10 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 I will definitely use this in my classroom as a teacher because this is the subject that I feel I have a real passion 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!