Encounters: European Explorers and Native Americans

Another major area of study this fall focused on the encounters between European explorers and Native Americans. The fifth graders looked at these encounters critically and wondered about the positive outcomes as well as the negative.

We learned that the Columbian Exchange is the term used to describe the exchange of agricultural goods, slave labor, diseases, and ideas between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres that began happening after Columbus’s first trip to the Americas in 1492.

Did you know that Italians got tomatoes from the New World, and the Spanish were the first to introduce horses to the Native Americans? A lot of the foods we love were first shared because of the Columbian Exchange. During our Tuesday Tasting Time, we all brought in and tasted a variety of familiar and not-so-familiar foods that were traded because of the Columbian Exchange.

At the beginning of October, some people observed Columbus Day. Usually, the story of European arrival in the New World is told from the European point of view. As a class, we read a short story called Encounter that gave us a new understanding by describing the arrival of Columbus from the perspective of a Taino boy who lived on an island in what is now the Bahamas. In addition, one of our texts this year is Howard Zinn’s A Young People’s History of the United States. This wonderful book provides alternate perspectives to those generally found in history books, which deepens our understanding of historical events. The chapter on Columbus and the Indians offered facts and stories that broadened our understanding of the encounter from both Columbus’s and the Native Americans’ points of view and gave us information with which to make our own critical evaluation.  

We learned about the good and the bad parts of the Columbian Exchange, and that made us wonder whether or not Columbus Day should be celebrated. Jesse taught us how to use Google docs, so we made a chart where we could all contribute our thoughts throughout our study. Then, we used our ideas to write critical 5-paragraph essays about the upsides and downsides of celebrating Columbus Day.

Each fifth grader also chose an explorer to study for a research project. We wondered about the facts of their exploration, and we were also curious about how their exploration affected others and the world. After reading a variety of sources and taking notes, the fifth graders created Explorer Scrapbooks, which included a five-paragraph essay, visual elements, a map of the explorer’s travels, and a timeline of their life.

The fifth graders practiced so many skills during the course of this project, including collaboration of ideas, critical thinking, using technology for real-world applications, nonfiction reading skills, research skills, and writing an essay. My favorite, though, was watching every student interact with our world map in a meaningful way. Because it was integral to their research, each student had to look closely at the map in ways they hadn’t before in order to find places that they may have never heard of (“Where IS the Strait of Gibraltar?”). Spending time looking at the map was not something I “assigned”; rather, it was learning that happened because of genuine curiosity and a desire for understanding. There was lots of collaboration between students, and there were many conversations about where places were around the world: just the kind of learning that sticks!