Making Decisions as a Governor
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Set

Objectives

1. Students will be able to relate several Virginia governors with important events that took place in Jamestown during their terms.
2. Through a role-playing activity, students will practice decision-making processes involving key colonial issues.
3. In groups, students will formulate creative plans of action in response to given colonial scenarios.

Materials

• handouts of "Planting a Colony"
• handouts of "The Starving Time"
• handouts of "Bacon's Rebellion"

Relevance

In studying the colonization of America, students often fail to realize the hardships of trying to plant a colony. Also, students rarely recognize the efforts needed to maintain the stability and survival of that colony. This lesson offers students the opportunity to make decisions as governor in response to critical situations in Jamestownís history. Students will focus on the following situations: the original founding of Jamestown, the "Starving Time", and Baconís Rebellion. This role-playing helps students to see the difficult decisions that colonial leaders had to make in the face of crisis developments. The group work should help students to realize the spectrum of conditions that governors had to consider. By deriving their own responses to these situations, students should see the complexities in trying to maintain a stable colony.

Involvement of the Learner

The teacher will ask the students: "Governing a colony is not easy. Have you ever been in a crisis situation where you were called on to make decisions for an entire group?"

 Transition

After a brief discussion about studentsí responses to the above question, the teacher will explain that the class will, in fact, be able to role-play and make key decisions as if they were the governors of Virginia.

 Explanation / Activity

1. The teacher will divide the class into groups of 3-4 students.
2. The teacher will pass out a scenario to each group. Different groups may have the same scenarios.
3. The teacher should circulate from group to group to offer suggestions and possible outcomes. The teacher should also monitor student participation in the groups and encourage all students to participate in the decision-making processes.

 Closure

To conclude the lesson, the teacher should ask individual groups to share their responses to the rest of the class. The teacher should also elaborate on the actual decisions that Virginiaís governors made in response to these events. At the end of the period, the teacher will collect group responses.

Sources:

Bridenbaugh, Carl. 1980. Jamestown, 1544-1699. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dabney, Virginius. 1971. Virginia: The New Dominion. New York: Doubleday & Company Inc.

Dodson, Leonidas. 1932. Alexander Spotswood. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Morton, Richard L. 1960. Colonial Virginia: Volume 1 The Tidewater Period, 1607-1710. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Vol. XIII. 1906. New York: James T. White & Company.

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