Seventh Graders Explore Exploring
“Four centuries ago, the English didn’t discover a New World—they created one.”
From America, Found and Lost by Charles C. Mann
This fall, seventh graders have examined the colonization of the Americas. Each student has spent weeks carefully researching a particular aspect of European colonization and has pulled the learning together in a research paper and a display. At yesterday’s Mundus Novus showcase, students exhibited the posters and dioramas they had made to shed light on a particular facet of the “new world” exploration and settlement.
Each of the four seventh-grade sections investigates a different dimension of colonization. During Mundus Novus, the classes present their slice of the story to one another as well as to invited family members and guests.
- VII Coleman examined the sociologic dynamics unleashed when European powers came into contact with one another and with indigenous peoples.
- VII Farmer researched the history of specific colonies, such as Jamestown, New Sweden, St. Augustine, and New Mexico, among others.
- VII Jones studied the “Columbian Exchange,” a term describing the circulation of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Old World and the Americas and their impact on the environment.
- VII Langdon explored the overarching goals of colonization and how the end results compared with the objectives that each European colonizing power held at the outset.
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