Columbus Lesson Plan

Kristine Wagner
Maureen McInerney
Nancy Forman
Jaime Erickson
Formal Lesson Plan

Essential Question: How do our senses help us understand the journey of Christopher Columbus?

NYS Standards:
Standard 1: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York.

Standard 2: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.

Standard 3: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of geography of the interdependent world in which we live-local, national, and global-including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth’s surface.

Motivation: The teacher will ask students to think about a time when they visited a place or people they had never seen before. The teacher will ask the following questions: In what ways did the visit turn out like you expected? In what ways did it turn out differently?

Mini-Lesson: Gather the students on the carpet. Read aloud the following passage to the class: In 1492, an Italian ship captain set off on a voyage across an unknown ocean. “I, Columbus, decided to write down everything I do, see, and experience on this voyage from day to day, and very carefully.” But Columbus did not know the actual size of the Earth. He did not know that North, Central, and South America lay between Europe and Asia. Even though he misjudged the Earth’s size, his voyage still changed the lives of people all over the world.

Students will return to their desks. Students will view the movie “Christopher Columbus Begins a Journey”. As the students are watching the movie, they will be asked to use sensory words to describe the voyage of Christopher Columbus. Students will complete a graphic organizer describing what they think Columbus smelled, heard, saw, tasted, and touched while on his voyage.

The students will write a journal entry from the point of view of Christopher Columbus. The students will use the sensory descriptions from their graphic organizer.

Closure: The students will be called to the carpet. The students will share and discuss their journal entries.