Educational Resources

Thousands of teachers and students visit Plimoth Patuxet to explore early American histories and interwoven communities, investigate changing landscapes, and understand the past through immersive, hands-on experiences.

Whether you visit with us in your community, at our Museum, or online, these activities can support students’ learning before or after an in-person or virtual field trip or outreach program.

Field Trip and Classroom Activities for Elementary Students

State and National Standards

Before Your Visit

Writing a Field Trip Compact

Review the Museum guidelines and ground rules for a successful visit. Work as a class to add your own guidelines. What will make a good learning experience for everyone? How will students uphold the guidelines if someone breaks the rules?

Write down your Field Trip Compact and ask the students to agree to uphold it by signing their names.

After your field trip, reflect in small groups or as a class on the compact guidelines. Did the agreement work? What would you do differently next time?

How do Museums Learn About the Past?

Museums learn about the past by studying primary sources - the building blocks of history - and using them to make educated guesses. Primary sources include written documents, archaeology, material culture, landscapes, oral histories, art, and photos.

What are some tools we use to study the past? Consider the following when looking at a primary source:

• What type of primary source is it? Document? Photograph? Work of art?

• Do you know who made it? If so, who?

• Do you know when they made it? If so, when?

• Does it have a name? If so, what is its name?

• Why do you think this source was made?

• What story (or stories) does the source tell about the past?

Find an Example of a Primary Source

Answer the following questions to put your examples into categories:

• What type of primary source is it? Document? Photograph? Work of art?

• Do you know who made it? If so, who?

• Do you know when they made it? If so, when?

• Does it have a name? If so, what is its name?

• Why do you think this source was made?

• What story (or stories) does the source tell about the past?

Challenging Stereotypes & First Impressions

What images come to mind when you hear the word “Indigenous”? What about “Pilgrim”? Use Plimoth Patuxet’s Homework Help essays to research “Who are the Wampanoag?” and “Who Were the Pilgrims?” Which of your first impressions were supported by research? Which were not? In small groups, have students discuss the first impressions that were not supported by research. Discuss where these images may have come from (ex. films/tv, literature, cartoon, etc.). After the field trip, students can use the information and evidence gathered during their experience at Plimoth Patuxet Museums to draft rebuttals to 1-2 false impressions from the list created before the field trip.

What Did They Think? Considering Multiple Points of View

Using multiple primary sources can help historians understand an historical event, person, or place from different perspectives. History has often been told from a single perspective. Other perspectives, including those of Indigenous people and women, were often left out.

Today, that is changing. Historians try to understand how an event affected the many people and communities involved. Historians can use primary sources and participants’ age, gender, culture, role in society, and geographic location - as well as records of similar experiences - to make educated guesses about participants’ points of view, but if participants did not leave behind oral or written accounts, there is no way historians can be sure how they felt about the event.

Some ideas to explore perspective

• Place a large, non-symmetrical object like a chair in front of the group. Have students draw only the side of the object they can clearly see. Do a think-pair-share: how does comparing the different perspectives change how we think about the object?

• Have students create a timeline of the previous school day. Use drawings, images and/or text to personalize the timeline and highlight events that were meaningful to them. Post the timelines on the wall. Discuss with the students why the timelines might be different. Choose one event that many students included. Ask: What did you eat? What else did you do? Who was with you? How did you feel? Then, as students to write a brief paragraph or draw a scene from the day, and discuss how students’ actions, feelings, and thoughts are similar or different based on their age, gender, race/ethnicity, cultural background, and past experience.

• Identify a major recent event that happened in your school, town/community, state, or nation. Ask students to bring in sources future historians could use to understand what happened and write or record a description of the item. Divide the class into groups. Have each group “curate” their items to tell a story about the event. Then have each group lead the other groups on a tour. How are the stories similar? How are they different? Why?

A Day in the 1600s

In groups or as a class, have students make a list of things they need to go to school every day. Distinguish between the things they need and the things that make life easier, more interesting or enjoyable, and then have the groups reorganize their list into these two categories. Instruct each group to choose one or two items from their list and use Plimoth Patuxet’s Homework Help Essays to research how the Wampanoag and the English colonists met their daily needs. Develop interview questions to build on their knowledge during their Plimoth Patuxet field trip. After the field trip, do a think-pair-share to explore the following questions:

• Did both cultures have the same needs?

• Did they fulfill these needs in the same way?

• What did each community do for pleasure?

The Wampanoag Way

This 8-minute video from Plimoth Patuxet Museums and Scholastic News explores the life of two Wampanoag girls past and present. Perfect for grades 1-3.

The Pilgrims: European Plague in Native New England, 1616-1619

Middle and high school students can prepare by watching the video The Pilgrims: European Plague in Native New England, 1616-1619, which explores the impact of European colonization from a Wampanoag perspective.

Pilgrim Life

This 6-minute film explores daily life for colonial children in the 1620s.

The Pilgrims: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Middle and high school students can learn about the political relationship between Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag community of Pokanoket or the origins of the religious movement that brought the Pilgrims to the Northeast with these and other videos.

17th-Century English

The Pilgrims spoke differently than we do today. Learn some 17th-century English.

Change, Continuity, and Context

As a group, construct a timeline to put Historic Patuxet and Plymouth Colony into context. Depending on the students' age, you may want to include events such as dates of familiar inventions, the birth of their grandparents and parents (approximate) and the students' birthdays. You might invite students to include local or state historical events that interest them or are relevant to your curriculum.

During Your Visit

Be a History Detective!

Use your five senses to explore Plimoth Patuxet Museums

Before your visit, ask students to use their prior knowledge and senses to brainstorm a list of what they guess or “hypothesize” the 17th-century looked, smelled, sounded, or felt like. During your field trip, have students record their observations and make written or digital notes, images or videos about what they actually see, smell, hear, and feel.

Scavenger hunts

Many of the items families used in the 1600s are still used in some form today. Challenge your students to find objects (such as the ones listed below) and document them. After the field trip, choose 1-2 items and do additional research on their uses in both the 17th century and today. Curate your own exhibit showcasing how their objects' uses have changed (or not!) over time.

• Something to cook in

• Something to eat with

• Something to wear in the cold

• Something to do when it rains

• Something for taking care of babies

• Something to take care of animals

• Something to grow food

• Something to help families stay in touch

• Something to use during a celebration

Maps and Geography

Maps and the lands and seascapes they represent are powerful primary sources. They hold important clues to understanding how cultures and communities connect and change over time. Maps don’t just chart geography. They also reflect worldview - how people see themselves (and others) in the world. Maps, just like spaces and communities, are multilayered. The layers tell us the hierarchy of what’s most important. Students can use their understanding of geography to explore how the English colonists and Wampanoag people understood and appreciated their own place(s) in the 17th-century world. Do they agree or disagree? How might those similarities or differences impact the way the communities interacted? Use the Homework Help essay on “Who Were the Pilgrims?” and “Who are the Wampanoag?” to enhance students’ understanding.

• Have students use an Indigenous map of the United States, like Native Land Digital, to locate their state, county, and city/town. Identify and locate Indigenous communities that are still active in your area today. What name(s) do they use for the place(s) where you live?

• Wampanoag and other tribal nations have their own names for places. Work in small groups or individually to research the meaning of these place names. Use the “Map of Wampanoag Country in the 1600s” to locate Patuxet (Plymouth) and resources from the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project to understand the meaning of these place names. What do these names tell us about the cultural and environmental characteristics of the place? Then explore John Smith’s “Map of New England” (1614). What does Smith’s choice of English place names tell us about his views on land?

• Explore Samuel Champlain’s map of “Port St. Louis” (1605). What does Champlain’s choice of French place names tell us about his views on land?

Journeys

Before your field trip, look at the primary source describing one of the journeys below, then use an atlas or digital mapping tool (such as Google Maps) to map the story onto the land and seascape. During your field trip, prepare students to conduct research to learn more about how different people in each community experienced or felt about these events. After your field trip, share how different perspectives or viewpoints changed how students’ understood the event.

Building Community

What does it mean to be a member of a community? How did people in 17th-century communities choose their leaders, establish laws, and shape their futures? Conversations about the community and government structures of the past can help us understand our present. You might:

• Discuss what it means to be a member of your school community. What is expected of students and teachers? Does your school have an honor code? What are the responsibilities of a citizen in the United States today?

• Research a 17th-century Indigenous or colonial community leader who lived between 1500 and 1627. During your field trip, ask Museum staff about the leader: What responsibilities did they have? How were they chosen? Who did they serve? What made them a good leader?

• During your field trip, interview staff about how they participate in their community (either 17th-century Plymouth Colony, Historic Patuxet, or a contemporary Indigenous community). Does everyone have the same opportunities to participate or participate in the same ways? Why or why not? How does each community make important decisions? Who makes the final decision? Is this similar to how your community works today?

• Interview Museum staff about a time the communities of Plymouth and Patuxet had to make an important decision as a community. What was the problem they were trying to solve? Did everyone agree on the best solution? What decision did they ultimately make?

STEM + Social Studies

Exploring the past using science, technology, engineering, and math can help us better understand the stories of Plymouth Colony and Patuxet. You might:

• Explore how seasonal changes affected daily life for families in 17th-century Patuxet and Plymouth. What natural signs did they use to know when to plant or harvest their crops?

• Draw a picture of Wampanoag wetuash (houses) and English houses. Compare the building materials and the shape of the structures. How are they the same? How are they different?

• Find examples of Wampanoag technology. Write or take pictures of your answers. What tools do you use to do the same job today?

• Do a simple machines scavenger hunt! How many wheels and axles, levers, pulleys, and inclined planes can you find in the 17th-century English Village, Plimoth Grist Mill, and Mayflower II? Make a list or draw pictures of each type of machine. How were they used?

• Explore the Wampanoag tradition of “companion planting” as an environmentally sustainable horticultural practice. What plants are involved and how do they biologically support each other?

• Calculate how much corn, beans, and squash a Wampanoag family needed to grow to support their family and community during the year. During your field trip, find out how many acres make up a typical Wampanoag garden. How many planting mounds are in 1 acre? Then calculate how many planting mounds were planted in a typical garden? Based on what you learn, how many acres would it take to feed your family/class/grade/school for a year?

• After two years in Plymouth Colony, Governor William Bradford decided to divide the colony’s land for the families to use individually rather than farming together as a community. Each family was given 1 acre per person in their household. In groups or as a class, have students interview a few colonists to determine how many people are in their household. What are their relationships with one another? Calculate how many acres of crops they can plant based on the acres they have. As a class, chart your information to determine which families could plant the most crops based on household size.

After Your Visit

Be a Cartographer!

Use the information you gathered during your field trip to construct an original map or artistic representation of the 17th-Century English Village and/or Historic Patuxet Homesite. Don’t forget to mark the locations of key cultural and environmental features such as rivers, springs, hills, streets, and houses. Students can combine their findings and make a guide to the Museum for next year’s students to use on their field trip. To extend the lesson, students visit the younger grades and give a presentation about their field trip, orienting the younger students to the Museum based on what they learned.

Many Stories

Have students research their family's (or community's) stories of how, when, where and why they came to your town. Were they already here when people from other areas arrived? Did they choose to come or not? What did they hope to find? Did they find it? How were they treated in this country? How did they treat the people who were already here? What experiences do their families have in common with those of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and other European and Indigenous communities in conflict and collaboration? What other factors may have impacted your family’s experience(s)?

Storytelling with Primary Sources

There are many ways to learn about the past including reading written accounts, listening to oral history, looking at art, and even walking on a landscape. You might challenge students to research a topic or central question. After your field trip:

• Write a letter to a friend from a 17th-century point of view describing your experience in a place and with people unknown to you.

• Write a newspaper article or blog post or film a news clip exploring an important historical event.

• Curate an exhibit with sketches, photos, or videos from your field trip.

• Draw a graphic novel or comic, or tell a story showcasing what you learned. Include how things might smell, sound and feel as well as how they look! Older students should use what they learned to craft an argument about an aspect of 17th-century life.

Field Trip Activities for Middle/High School Students

Plimoth Patuxet is an excellent resource for educators seeking to meet requirements for state curriculum frameworks. Museum staff are skilled at weaving elements of geography, history, economics, and civics and government into the stories they tell. Studying the stories of our shared past strengthens social and emotional skills. Students understand their own life in the context of history and participate in dialogues across differences to explore the many ways diverse experiences and perspectives shape our past, present, and future.

While a special effort has been made to align our programs with the Massachusetts History and Social Science Frameworks, the Museum’s programs and exhibits are highly relevant to national social studies standards and many state frameworks.

State and National Standards

Before Your Visit

Prior Knowledge Chart

Before your visit, ask students to brainstorm a list of ideas they have about the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and their cultural encounters in Patuxet (Plymouth) 400 years ago. Record their ideas and assign each chaperone group 2-3 items to explore further during their field trip. After the field trip, have students review the list and determine which ideas held true and which did not.

What Did They Think? Considering Multiple Points of View

Using multiple primary sources can help historians understand an historical event, person, or place from different perspectives. History has often been told from a single perspective. Other perspectives, including those of Indigenous people and women, were often left out.

Today, that is changing. Now historians try to understand how an event affected the many people and communities involved. If participants or witnesses to an event did not leave behind oral or written accounts, there is no way historians can be sure how they felt about the event. Historians can use primary sources and participants’ age, gender, culture, role in society, and geographic location - as well as records of similar experiences - to make educated guesses about participants’ points of view. The resources on the Teacher Tools - Digital Resources page and Plimoth Patuxet's Homework Help Essays can provide additional background information.

• In groups or as individuals, ask students to look at an excerpt from a primary source such as the arrival of Samoset in New Plymouth in March 1621, the 1621 harvest celebration, or Edward Winslow’s visit to Ousamequin (Massasoit) at Pokanoket. Identify whose perspective(s) are included and whose are not. Based on what they know and what they learn during their field trip, challenge the students to retell the story in the primary source from someone else’s point of view. What factors or events may have influenced how the students’ perspectives changed?

• Discuss what choices the students in your class must make at their age. Did children in the 17th century -- both Pilgrim and Wampanoag -- have to make these same choices? If they did, would they have made the same decisions as students today? What factors (parents, church, peers, society) might affect their decisions? What has caused these decisions to change over time?

Economics

How did the introduction of European trade goods in the 1500s impact and influence the choices made by Wampanoag and other Indigenous leaders? How did the economic decisions made in Plymouth Colony affect their well-being and their future goals? Plimoth Patuxet’s digital exhibit, Echoes of the Ancestors: Transformations of Wampanoag Life from the Paleoindian Period through the Colonial Era can provide additional background.

Maps and Geography

Land and seascapes are powerful primary sources. They hold important clues to understanding how cultures and communities connect and change over time.

• Explore 17th-century maps to learn how 17th-century English and Wampanoag communities understood and appreciated their own place(s) in the world. Did they agree or disagree? How might those similarities or differences have impacted the way communities interacted?

• Have students use their own observations to identify at least 3 ways the English colonists and the Wampanoag actively changed the environment to improve their lives (ex: taking down trees to make mishoonash (boats) or clearing land for building houses and planting crops)? What long-term impact did these changes have on the landscape and the people? For example, students might think about how damming rivers to harness water power impacts a river’s ecology.

• Let students choose an example of how the English colonists or Wampanoag people actively changed their landscape and complete an impact report to share with the class. What are the short- and long-term consequences of their activities? With the benefit of four centuries of hindsight, what mitigation strategies would they suggest to either community’s leadership?

Civics and Community

Conversations about the community and government structures of the past can help us understand our present. Just like we do today, people in 17th-century communities chose their leaders, established their laws, and shaped their future.

• Middle and high school students can explore why the Mayflower Compact was signed.
• Students can take a look at the Pilgrims' first winter in New England by watching this 2-minute video.

• The Mayflower Compact was an agreement based on shared goals and visions for the future of Plymouth Colony. It also established necessary laws and civil government to ensure their success. Before your field trip, work in small groups to make a “Field Trip Compact.”

• Discuss what it means to be a member of your school community. What is expected of students and teachers? Does your school have an honor code? What are the responsibilities of a citizen in the United States today?

• During your field trip, ask Museum staff about key aspects of community life such as:

  • What different roles and responsibilities do people have in their community?

  • How are decisions made in your community? Who makes the final decision?

  • How is information shared in your community?

  • What happens when groups in the community disagree?

  • What makes a good leader? How are leaders chosen?

• Stage an election for a governor and five assistants for Plymouth Colony in 1628. Based on what they learned at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, have students put together candidate platforms featuring their responses to the key issues facing the community in 1627.

• Based on what they learned about the relationship between the colonial English and Wampanoag communities in 1627, students debate whether the sachem Ousamequin (known to history as Massasoit) should (a) continue with his community’s relationship with Plymouth Colony or (b) make changes to the existing agreement to address issues that have come up over the past seven years. If students choose (b), what changes would they suggest and why?

• Use the Records of Plymouth Colony’s colonial government to explore how English laws impacted Wampanoag and other Indigenous communities throughout the century. You might search the index or do a keyword search for terms such as “swine” or “fences.”

STEM

STEM is an important part of history, too! Exploring the past using science, technology, engineering, and math can help us better understand the stories of Plymouth Colony and Patuxet.

• Compare and contrast how 17th-century Wampanoag and English communities thought about health and the human body in the 1600s. How does it compare to our understanding today?

• Analyze and compare materials traditionally used by Wampanoag and English craftspeople including clay, stone, wood, metal, and natural fibers like milkweed, dogbane, wool, and linen. How are the various materials used for specific tasks? Why did they choose these materials and how did the craftspeople acquire these materials?

• Try your hand at working with a 17th-century tool. What is the tool’s function? Do we still use this tool today?

• Interview Museum staff about how 17th-century Wampanoag and English communities responded to natural disasters. What impact did the event have on daily life for each community?

• Have students conduct research about how maize (corn) evolved from a wild grass to a domesticated crop. How did the plant’s characteristics and structures ensure its success in Patuxet?

After Your Field Trip

Storytelling with Primary Sources

There are many ways to learn about the past including reading written accounts, listening to oral history, looking at art, and even walking on a landscape. You might challenge students to research a topic or central question. After your field trip, you might:

• Write a letter to a friend from a 17th-century point of view describing your experience in a place and with people unknown to you.

• Write a newspaper article or blog post or film a news clip exploring an important historical event.

• Draw a graphic novel or comic, or tell a story showcasing what you learned. Include how things might smell, sound and feel as well as how they look! Curate an exhibit with sketches, photos, or videos from your field trip.

• Have older students choose an aspect of 17th century-Wampanoag or colonial English life to research further. Ask students to use what they learned to curate an original exhibit with sketches, photos, or videos from your field trip.

Many Stories

Have students research their family's (or community's) stories of how, when, where and why they came to your town or region. Were they already here when people from other areas/continents arrived? Did they choose to come or not? Why or why not? What did they hope to find? Did they find it? How were they treated in this country? How did they treat the people who were already here? After the field trip, revisit these family stories. What experiences do their families have in common with those of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and other European and Indigenous communities in conflict and collaboration? What’s different? What other factors may have impacted your family’s experience(s)?

Structured Academic Controversy (SAC)/Document-Based Question (DBQ)

Based on what students learned about the relationship between colonial English and Wampanoag communities in the 1620s, debate the following statement. You may wish to create a date range to confine your argument, or not:

The alliance of 1621 was/was not a success.

Use the primary sources in You are the Historian "Unit 2: Leadership and Diplomacy" and the following additional primary sources to put together your arguments:

• “A Journey to Pokanoket…”Mourt's Relation a Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight B. Heath (Applewood Books, 1963) pg. 60- 68

• “A Journey to Nemasket”Mourt's Relation a Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight B. Heath (Applewood Books, 1963) pg. 60- 68

• “Of Their Being Menaced by the Narragansetts and their second voyage to the Massachusetts” Good News from New England: a true relation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in New England (Applewood Books) pg. 8

• “Winslow’s Second Journey to [Pokanoket]…” Good News from New England: a true relation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in New England (Applewood Books) pg. 31

• “Standish’s Expedition Against the Indians of Wessagusset…” Good News from New England: a true relation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in New England (Applewood Books) pg. 40-51

• Letter from Emmanual Althan to Sir Edward Altham, September 1623. Three Visitors to Early Plymouth pg. 23-35

What Questions are Left Unanswered?

Plimoth Patuxet's Homework Help Essays and additional primary sources provided on this page can provide additional background information and classroom resources.