Using Maps as Primary Sources
This website shows a 4th-grade teacher in northern Virginia teaching a lesson focused on a map drawn by John Smith that was published in 1612. Source Analysis, a feature created for the Loudoun County (Virginia) (TAH) website, has three sections focused on this primary source: scholar analysis, teacher analysis, and classroom practice. The latter two sections show a standards-based lesson that asks students to answer the question: What is important to John Smith? The teacher carefully plans activities so students look closely at the map and consider how this primary source helps them answer the central question. The site provides examples of two promising practices:
- Engaging young students in close, careful observation and reading of a primary source document (using student pairs and a comparative document); and
- Using students' observations to inform and guide analysis and connect the source to larger questions and topics in the curriculum.
In the Classroom Practice section, we see the lesson in action. The teacher introduces the lesson question and then takes time to ensure that students understand the question by introducing synonyms for "important" and reviewing word meanings. She passes out the maps to assigned student pairs and asks them, "What do you see?" Students have time to look carefully at the map and notice words (e.g., "Jamestown" and "Powhatan"), the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, living structures, trees, how particular words vary in size and spacing, and so on. The teacher further facilitates the students' observation by juxtaposing the 1612 map with a contemporary textbook map of the same region. This juxtaposition helps students see the choices John Smith made in drawing this map that they might have missed without the comparative source. The teacher then uses what students notice about these maps to help them think about what the details and differences mean. Students start to identify what was important to John Smith and subsequently to the Virginia Company, given the evidence in front of them. Throughout this instruction, the teacher uses feedback, a logical sequencing of activities, and clear and accessible questions to ensure access to the learning activities for all of her students.
This teacher shows how carefully structured lessons that use primary sources can engage students in the process of thinking like historians. Students slow down and carefully read and look at the map, noticing things that they might otherwise have missed. They then consider what the contents of the map mean and what the map tells us about John Smith and the Virginia Company's worldview. The 1612 map becomes a window into the past that only reveals its slice of the landscape with close reading. Also on this site is a Teacher Analysis section in which the teacher explains some of what preceded this lesson and her instructional choices—a useful complement to the classroom videos. Each of these sections presents information in a set of videos that are clearly titled and visually interesting.
