Jamestown: Walk Into 1607

Day-Before Checklist

Teacher Controls

Student View hides teacher-only scripts and sensitive-topic notes if students are looking at the same screen. Faith Reflections are optional TLC prompts and stay hidden unless enabled.

Use “How Do We Know?” Often

Ask students whether a claim comes from archaeology, a written primary source, Indigenous knowledge and oral traditions, an artifact, a later monument, or a modern reconstruction. Different evidence answers different questions.

Avoid the “Empty Wilderness” Story

The English entered an inhabited homeland. Powhatan communities had established political, agricultural, trade, and cultural systems long before 1607.

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a child when the English arrived. The famous John Smith rescue story is debated. Treat uncertainty as part of historical investigation instead of presenting legend as settled fact.

The Starving Time

For grades 5–6: explain that war, isolation, food shortages, disease, and other pressures created a catastrophic winter. Archaeology shows starvation became so severe that at least one deceased person’s remains were used for food. Avoid graphic detail.

Africans & 1619

The first documented Africans in Virginia arrived in 1619 after being taken from a Portuguese slave ship by English privateers. Virginia’s race-based hereditary slave system developed over time; do not compress that legal history into a single moment.

Words Matter

Use “Powhatan peoples/communities” rather than talking as if one single village represented all Indigenous people. When discussing reconstructions, say “re-created” or “reconstructed,” not “the original.”