John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, and Miles Standish

The story of John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, and Miles Standish is one of the favorite Thanksgiving stories, right up there with Squanto and the fish. It is found most completely in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," a long long poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which few people read nowadays. (So here is a summary of it in case you don't.)

In the story, Miles Standish, captain of the Mayflower, has taken a fancy to one of the young passengers, Priscilla Mullins. He asks his young lodger, John Alden, to go to Priscilla and court her for him, since he is a man of action and not of words. When John presents Standish's proposal, Priscilla says, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" The two end up marrying.

Let me offer you some links to go with this story:

• Here is the story retold for children, with lots of historical detail, from A First Book in American History by Edward Eggleston. There are a couple of writing prompts included.
• Here is a play script for the story. Use it as a starting point for writing  a play or Reader's Theater script, or read it for a quick puppet play.
• Read about the Alden's home and family.
• Here is a PDF file of the Longfellow poem which you could print out for your class.
• Find out general background about the Pilgrims. This site is a good reference for teachers, and also a good technology connection for upper elementary and above. We especially like the collection of primary sources, including letters.

English

• Read an interview with John Alden -- or rather with the person who recreates Alden's character at the Plimoth Plantation. For a quick, seasonal assignment for fourth grade and up, ask students to read the interview and rewrite it as an example of descriptive, narrative, or other type of writing that you have been studying.
• Here, for high school students, is the story as presented by Donald Ogden Stewart in A Parody Outline of History. This piece tells the story in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, providing a nice seasonal opportunity to look at Fitzgerald's style. Assuming that your students have read The Great Gatsby, this would be a good starting point for a lesson on parody.
• Compare this story with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Here is a thorough lesson plan for Rostand's play.
• There can be few better choices than this story for rewriting from different points of view.

Critical thinking

• The factual background to this story is very limited. In fact, the only real source of the story is the poem by Alden descendant Longfellow, who knew it as a family story. Discuss the importance of oral history and the drawbacks to relying on it. Identify the provable facts of the story (essentially, that all three characters existed and that John and Priscilla married) and decide how to evaluate the plausibility of the rest of the story.
• The entire question of the provability of history is examined at this site, which looks at widespread misinformation about Standish and in particular about that other beloved character of Thanksgiving stories, Squanto. Examine the sources given to decide whether the author's claims are accurate.
• Following one or both of these discussions, consider the question: should a story be told if it isn't true? At what point does a good historical tale become a legend? Is there a point along that continuum at which we should stop treating it as history?

Character

• This story contains a wonderful ethical dilemma. John, who already loves Priscilla, is asked by a friend to court her on the friend's behalf. As a good friend, should he have foreseen the outcome and refused? Or should he have gone ahead and done his best, as he did in the story? Captain Standish didn't know of his friend's love for Priscilla; should John have told him? Had he known, would Standish have foreseen the outcome? Would he have retracted his request out of kindness? And what about Priscilla? Should she have put John in the difficult position of having to betray his friend? Should she have kept quiet, even though her own happiness -- and that of the men as well -- was at stake? This would be a great topic for a free-ranging discussion followed by a more structured debate, and that ought to get you through this truncated week.
• For a briefer activity, have students list all the character traits they see in the three main characters of the story.
• The poem shows some very old-fashioned attitudes (as we would expect), describing Native Americans as "heathens" and "savages" and showing similar obsolete viewpoints about women and other topics. Practice skimming and scanning by having students highlight examples of attitudes we would now find offensive, and discuss whether such literature should still be read or not. Is it worse to subject ourselves to offensive language, or to lose old works that are still important parts of our heritage?

Currently The Perfect Thanksgiving By Eileen Spinelli see related

The Perfect Thanksgiving Lesson Plans

One of my favorite Thanksgiving books is Eileen Spinelli's The Perfect Thanksgiving. JoAnn Adinolfi illustrated it with bright colors and primitive drawings with mixed media collage. It is the story of two different Thanksgiving celebrations: the perfect holiday of Abigail Archer, and the imperfect one of the narrator.

"Abigail Archer's father serves white meat all around.
Everyone takes dainty bites, and no one makes a sound."

In contrast,

"My grandpa chews the gizzards, my brother chomps the wings,
My sister slurps. My uncle burps. And Aunt Clarissa sings."

The differences are detailed throughout the book, and it finishes up with,

"But we're alike in one way, the nicest way by far--
alike in just how loving our different families are."

The book, told in rhyme, is a fun read-aloud and a great way to kick of discussions oabout modern celebrations of Thanksgiving.

English

• I like this book for introducing the concept of compare/contrast essays. There's an introduction, focusing on the idea of perfection in families. There's a good series of comparisons, using lively language and details. Then there's a conclusion wrapping it up and returning to the idea of perfection in families.
• It's equally good for descriptive writing. The lace tablecloths, people playing chess, and pristine bottles of shampoo in the guest rooms contrast perfectly with the guests sleeping in the kitchen, children jumping on the furniture, and snoring. Have a student scribe list all the lively verbs, specific nouns, and telling adjectives in the book. Note how the swirls of whipped cream on homemade pies bring to mind a completely different image from the Jell-O mold quivering on the floor.
• I also like the way the comparisons stand on their own, without requiring "in comparison," "unlike the first family," and other weakening transitions. It's good to teach our students transitions, but sometimes they become crutches.

Economics

• Most of the differences between the two families can't be chalked up to income levels. Taking a walk and playing chess cost no more than napping, and less than watching TV. But older students may enjoy debating whether there is a socioeconomic class difference between the two families.
• Where do the images of the "perfect Thanksgiving" come from? Have students find pictures in magazines. Is it a consumer-driven expectation? Does the image of the perfect holiday encourage consumers to spend more than they otherwise would, in an effort to create that perfection?

Critical Thinking

• You'll certainly want to use your Venn diagrams to compare the two families.
• The author concludes that loving families are the most important thing about Thanksgiving, and that both the family that burps and hollers and the family that shares toys are equally loving. Find evidence in the book -- int he words or the illustrations -- to support that claim.
   

Immigration Lesson Plans

Immigration is a topic I like to bring into lesson plans around Thanksgiving. After all, that Pilgrim Thanksgiving was a celebration by immigrants who had survived their first year in their new home. Our stories of that occasion focus on their reasons for coming to America, their efforts to settle in and figure out how to live here in a new place, and the way they related to the people who were already here.

Here are a couple of lessons that look at the question of where the people who live here now came from. It's generally agreed that Native Americans came from Asia originally, so our nation really is a nation of immigrants. Celebrate the cultural richness of your classroom with fun math and technology practice before the long break!

Genealogy-based plan

Have students chart their own family trees as well as they can, identifying where all the people on the tree came from. Then gather all the family trees and create a class bulletin board, showing all the students, with when and where their ancestors came from other countries to the United States.

• Try an online family tree kids can complete and print out. Good practice with navigation and keyboard skills.
• a PDF file with a semi-circular fan chart designed for kids, from Misbach.
• Let older students get some tech practice by extending their research at Rootsweb.
• Some families don't have enough information to know where their families came from originally. In such a case, recognize that it isn't possible to know which country the families began in, and accept their oral tradition, or use search engines to make a guess about the origin of their surname.
• Some families will have lots of immigrant ancestors from different places. Encourage students to find creative ways to show all the elements of their heritage on their branch of the class tree.

• Use a bulletin board tree to make your "Where We Came From" display.

Demographics-based plan

Instead of focusing on the ethnic heritage of your particular classroom, look at your community, state, or nation. Determine where people in your community came from, and make a graphic representation of that data. Compare different levels: your country, state, county, or city, for example. If you've done the genealogy-based lesson, you can also compare with your classroom and see how typical you are.

• Census data for the U.S. from 1790 to 1990 gives students opportunities to use Excel and to work with lots of charts and numbers.
• ERsys.com uses maps and simpler charts, and you can get down to your particular city.

Project Euler

Pilgrims, Pioneers, and Native Americans: Confusion in the Classroom

Unlike Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving is one of the holidays we are required to study in the classroom. Our state social studies standards mandate the study of Thanksgiving for three years in a row, and the relationship of Native Americans and Pilgrims for five straight years.

Since there are some confusions that tend to arise during these lessons, and practice makes perfect, some students end up perfectly confused. In order to nip that in the bud, let's examine the confusions.

Pilgrims vs. Pioneers We study both pilgrims and pioneers in the context of Thanksgiving and in the context of relationships between Native Americans and Americans of European heritage. Both traveled to new lands, enduring hardships and uncertainties. Both words begin with a "P" and both groups lived a long time ago -- an unimaginably long time for our youngest students. Is it any wonder that they mix the two up? However, there are some very important differences between the two groups:

• They are separated by a couple of centuries.
• The Pilgrims were pioneers of a sort, but the Pioneers were not pilgrims.
• The Pilgrims were British colonists, while Arkansas was never a British colony; Arkansas kids who mix up the Pilgrims and the Pioneers usually get confused about this point.
• The Pilgrims did not live in Arkansas. Kids who get these two groups confused have both time and space to get confused about.

How can we make certain that our students don't get confused? First, study the two groups thoroughly enough that the kids have more than a vague impression of people in long dresses and hats.

Resources for studying pilgrims:

• Scholastic's excellent Thanksgiving site has lots of resources, including graphic organizers that will help clarify the Pilgrims' location in time and space.
• Plimouth Plantation's online learning center gets very busy as the holiday nears; use it toward the beginning of the month for best results. If they're too busy to let you in, check out "Talk Like a Pilgrim" and you will find links to recipes, coloring pages, and more, too.
• Enchanted Learning's printable  Pilgrim Book includes maps and simple reading, as well as pictures to color.

Resources for studying pioneers:

• Printable coloring sheet showing the contents of  a covered wagon. Combine the printout with this list of "Provisions and Prices," which also includes very interesting commentary.
• More coloring sheets are available at the linked site, in the form of links to PDF files.
• Here is an animated map of the U.S. showing its expansion from the 1600s through 1800s. Pair this with a timeline.
• Here is a site with data about building and living in a log cabin. Here in our region, a log cabin was usually about 10 feet square. Measure and mark that much space on the floor with Mavalus tape. If students are old enough, have them analyze local census records from 1830 or 1850 to determine the average size of a family (find the records easily in the genealogy section of the local library). They will find that families here contained 8 or 10 people as a rule. Have 8 to 10 students settle into the cabin space marked on the floor and see what the space felt like.
• The Prairie Traveler is a wonderful resource for the study of the pioneers.  
  

Now use a Venn diagram to clarify the difference between the two groups.

Native Americans, here and there We've said before that it is easy for students to get the idea that Native Americans are a single group, and important for them not to get that idea. If students have the mental image of the Wampanoag when they think of Arkansas native Americans, or think that Squanto was Cherokee or Osage, they have a basic confusion.

Start with some map work. Milliken's Early North America contains a computer CD with a printable map of the major Native American cultural groups which shows both the Caddo and the Osage. Here is a very nice printable online map. Use Blank U.S. Map Pads to let students make their own maps of this kind. The hands-on work will help cement the information.

Delve deeper. Here are some resources for studying specific groups of Native Americans:

• The Native Languages of the Americas database is an impressive resource. Kids can work on technology skills as they explore the database, looking for information on the various groups you choose to study. One approach would be to use the Web Organizer Pocket Chart. Label the center "Native Americans," and use the six outside circles to gather data on local Native American groups and those who joined the Pilgrims for the first Thanksgiving in 1621. Depending on your grade level, the circles might include information on the place where the particular tribe lived, the language and cultural group, the current status and location of the tribe or the tribal government, or details about livelihood and lifestyle.
• An Artsedge lesson plan, "Make a Wampum Belt," includes art, economics, and good amounts of background information with geographic connections. One of the links for this lesson is a chart comparing Native American groups including not only the Northeastern people, but also the Cherokee and the Siouan groups, both of whom were represented in Arkansas history.

The variety of ideas here will give multisensory lessons focussing on different areas of the multiple intelligences schema and different levels of Bloomfield's taxonomy. Critical thinking and cross-curricular connections, a multicultural outlook, and a good variety of products for assessment should make this a very rich study. And we would be willing to bet that your class will not be confused any more when you finish.