Alternative Perspectives

In our Voyage Long and Strange discussion, we asked ourselves how we can best prepare young children for their future studies which (hopefully) will complicate their knowledge of history? How can we prepare students so they won't be angry when they get to high school or college and learn that "everything they had been told was wrong?"

One way is by continually offering a variety of perspectives while teaching about the past. Encounter is one such book which introduces a different point of view about Columbus's voyage.

Try also comparing Sarah Morton's Day with Tapenum's Day when discussing the Pilgrims.

Mapping the New World

The Stanford History Education Group has published a new United States history curriculum, Reading Like a Historian. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents modified for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.

The Colonial Unit connects to many of the themes we are discussing this fall. Check out the "Mapping the New World" lesson plan which asks students to think about why maps change over time by comparing a 1636 Powhatan map with this 1651 Virginia map.

Europe, Africa, and the Americas

History Now, a quarterly online journal for history teachers and students, is now available at www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow.

Teachers responsible for a class in early American history often find themselves asking: When does American history begin? What does "America" include? The current issue of History Now takes the broadest approach to such questions, examining what historians call "The Atlantic World," four continents linked by the Atlantic Ocean. Scholars look at conditions in England and the Americas before English colonization; they create a context for understanding Indian and African enslavement; and they examine the perils of traveling the waters that connect peoples of each continent to one another.

This newsletter is of particular interest for teachers involved in book group this fall. Check out the interactive maps, "Perils of the Ocean in the Early Modern Era", and related lesson plans.

A Voyage Long and Strange

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World is our first reading for the 2010 - 2011 school year.


Check out the author's website for a slide show of related primary sources and an interactive map which traces the routes of North American explorers.