Jaques Cartier (Lesson 3)

Phew, after this post I'll be all caught up. And with this post I'm writing about a lesson I taught this morning, versus last week or two weeks ago.

Planning this morning's lesson on Jacques Cartier was incredibly frustrating. After researching information on Cartier and his voyages, I tried desperately to find some activity or lesson plan that would teach the material in a fun way for students. After 3 hours of googling different combinations of words, I had no more than when I started. I thought about it and decided to do a word search and then have the students write a letter home pretending to be Jacques Cartier. This was an activity I had originally thought of doing for the last lesson (at a station), but I found something I liked better for that, and was desperate for something to do with the Cartier lesson. I made the word search online, and decided that after students completed it we would discuss how each word they had to find related to Jacques Cartier.

As far as initially presenting the information, I did it in a "lecture" type mode, stopping to ask the students questions periodically. (I would say something like, "When he discovered Canada, Cartier found a new group of "Indians", does anyone know which "Indians" were in Canada?" - this way they could help to complete the lecture). I only talked to them about Cartier for 5-10 minutes, telling the story of each of his three voyages, and students participated by answering questions as I asked them. Still, Brooke said that some students seemed ansy during this. I was frustrated that I didn't know how to get the information across in any other way. (I talked to Ms. K. afterward and she said that she didn't know a better way either, they don't even have text books that can be used to help with this).

After teaching the material, the students completed the word search, which they loved. I didn't want this to be a meaningless activity, so as I said, we discussed why each word was significant, and the students were able to recall all the information. I put the icon on the timeline and traced Cartier's path, as well as the pathways of the other explorers for the students.

The final activity, where the students wrote letters home from Canada pretending to be Cartier, went really well. Students really engaged with the assignment. Many letters sounded something like, "Dear Mom, I'm stuck in Canada because of the hard winter. It would be too dangerous to travel home. I have been exploring and I met some Iroquois Indians. I like them and am going to bring two home with me. Some of my men have scury and are very sick. I miss you and can't wait to come back to France. Love, Student M." It was really encouraging to me to see them get put so much of what I had talked about into their writing. Still, there were some students who wrote very little. Overall though, I really liked that activity, and would definitely use it again if I were teaching explorers.

Once again my lesson was cut a little short by something the students had to do. I was not able to have the students complete the sheet in their detective books, but Ms. K was going to have them do it after specials. (TP and I had decided not to let them do this during the lesson, due to the previous distraction).

I still wish I could have come up with some other way to teach the information at the beginning of the lesson, but I was very well satisfied by how much the students seemed to gain (and demonstrate in their explanation of the word search words and in the letters). I will be excited to see how they did with the detective books.