Summary
“Ouch! That hurt! Where is my armor? Arrows are flying! We need to protect ourselves from these Virginia Indians.” After studying Jamestown, and hearing the predicament of the original settlers, students were placed into groups and given materials to construct a fort. The fort needed to be fortified and long lasting. Learners were advised that they would be critiqued by peers and maybe even Jamestown itself! Engineering, knowledge, cooperation, and leadership skills were needed to produce this product. Who will emerge as the group leader, and which fort will be selected as Jamestown’s top model?
TIPC Ratings
This lesson occurs after students have learned and researched about the Jamestown settlement and the issues that arose when the Indians invaded. Even though the research element was not incorporated in this lesson, students had to synthesize the information they learned about the Jamestown forts and the Indians evasive tactics to design a fort that would protect the settlers.
This lesson has students fully engaged and collaborating as they are challenged to work together to create a safe and effective fort that would have survived back in the Jamestown era. Students have to communicate with one another while deciding what supplies they need, bartering with others, and deciding how to construct their fort. Collaboration and Communication occurred throughout the whole Google Doc reflection piece of the lesson. Furthermore, teamwork and communication were really tested when the groups had to annotate and explain their reasonings for their fort creation in their ipad movies that were sent to Jamestown supervisors. The feedback provided by Jamestown served as a strong reflection for students that helped them set goals for future growth.
A lot of decision making and problem solving was needed when it came time for students to use their background knowledge about Jamestown as they worked together to engineer a fort with random materials. Collectively, groups had to decide what would protect their fort, what they were going to use to build the structures and what they would need to barter. Students had to analyze and provide feedback on other groups’ structures using the collaborative Google Doc as well as record their explanations of their structure by using Screenchomp on the ipads.
Throughout the entire lesson students were expressing their creativity and innovation skills as they synthesized existing and self generated knowledge about Jamestown forts. They had to create new products (the forts) by using strategic risks (bartering choices) to support innovation. Students were given time to reflect and express their thinking and team building skills while setting goals for future growth (reflection sheet).
