Roots of a Nation: A Chesapeake Journey Submitted By: Ellen Chamberlin
Topic: Colonial Craftsmen and their Natural Resources
Grade Level: grade 4
Duration: Two or three forty minute class periods
Focus Question: Did the continual use of certain natural resources by American colonial craftsmen create a problem for the community and/or the environment? What natural resources were used?
Social Studies Alignment:
4A1: Explain that people must make choices because resources are limited relative to economic wants for good s and services.
4A2a: Explain how limited economic resources are used to produce goods and services to satisfy economic wants in Maryland.
Science Alignment:
6A1b: Describe how humans use renewable natural resources, such as plants, soil, water, animals.
6A1c: Describe how humans use nonrenewable natural resources, such as oil, coal, natural gas, minerals including metals
Lesson Objectives: Students will be able to identify the craftsmen necessary to create an early colonial community. Identify all the natural resources necessary for the craftsman’s product. Identify if those resources are renewable or nonrenewable. Speculate whether the use of those natural resources would or wouldn’t harm the environment. Explain if a craft from the list is still necessary for today’s community.
Vocabulary: Natural resource, renewable and nonrenewable resources, craftsmen/tradesmen, goods and services, deplete
Materials:
List of trades/occupations with definitions, cube template, question sheet
Instructional Procedures: 1.Divide the class into small groups. Each group will define, compare and contrast craftsmen as a group of people who have jobs in early colonial society. They are to mark an S for service and G for goods on a given list if the craftsmen listed either provides a good or service.
2. Students will generate a list of r=nonrenewable and renewable resources of the 1700s in the Chesapeake Bay area. Oil, gas, rubber, plastic redwood trees, bamboo, etc. were not available at the time. Trees, iron, certain plants, reeds, and products from Europe were available. Groups will share out their information.
3. Teacher will assign one trade for each student on which they will conduct brief research.
Students are given time to check available research on their craft and to complete the answer sheet.
4. Once information is discovered and recorded, the students will be shown how to create a cube using the template. Each student then completes the cube by filling in the information and then folding each side to create a 3-D cube for display.
5. Students will then present their information to the class.
Name______Date______
Directions: Answer the following questions about your craftsman.
Side 1: What product or service does your craftsman produce or provide?
Side 2: What raw materials are used? Where will you get them?
Side 3: Are these materials renewable or nonrenewable?
Side 4: Draw a picture of your craftsmen performing a service or producing a good.
Additional information: Is your craft still used today? Explain.
If so, how has it changed? If not, why not? Would it have harmed the environment?
______
Extension Activity:
- Students could be encouraged to make a 3-D shape with a larger number of sides in order to include interesting facts.
- Students could report on how this trade is active today and compare the use of resources. Does it continue to harm the environment? Could someone have done several of these crafts or trades at the same time/ Which ones?
- Encourage each child present his or her craft at Colonial Crafts Day in your classroom. Invite other classes while the students are performing these crafts.
- Have the students mark which trades would have been the most useful in the colonies and call it the “Top Ten of Trades.” (And which would have been the least necessary?)