Teaching About Thanksgiving

Teaching about Thanksgiving not as easy as it used to be. The iconic images of the Mayflower passengers disembarking at Plymouth Rock and being met by Native Americans who were about to serve a feast out of some gourmet magazine is just not entirely true.

There are a number of web sites that may be useful in creating lesson plans that are both fun and historically accurate.

The online education magazine Education World has an article about the “real Story of the First Thanksgiving.” Hint- it is more than just the story of Squanto.

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/Teach-the-Real-Story-of-the-First-Thanksgiving.shtml

Lessons can include writing and speaking about what students are thankful for. The topic of Thanksgiving also   provides teachers with the opportunity to discuss diversity in America.

Scholastic.com also provides classroom teachers with lesson plans about the Mayflower as well as the customs and culture of the time period. Check out

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collection/teaching-about-first-thanksgiving. You will also find video clips and excerpts of actual letters written by the Mayflower settlers. There are also link to Common Core standards that can be integrated into the teaching about Thanksgiving.

For those of you in the Massachusetts area a visit to the Plimouth Plantation, a living history museum depicting 17^th century life in Massachusetts Bay Colony. For the rest of use, visit the web site www.plimouth.org.

Finally, there are a number of various media resources that can be found in the archives of the Library of Congress. Visit www. loc.org

Best wishes to you, your families and your students for a Happy Thanksgiving

c.2015 J. Margolis