1. Children should brainstorm prior knowledge of the voyages of Christopher Columbus. The teacher should record this knowledge on sentence strips to be sequenced. Children should also review their understanding of the concept of exploration.
2. Children should learn that Columbus was only one of many explorers who set sail to explore the Americas in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Among the books on this topic accessible to second graders is
The Discovery of the Americas
, by Betsy and Giulio Maestro. Children, individually or in groups, can research explorers like Cabot and Magellan to find out when their voyages were, which nations they represented, and what they explored.
3. Have the children display the information they have gathered in different ways. Among the ways are: placing information about explorations on the classroom time line; coloring maps showing nations that sent explorers and lands explored; creating posters announcing the exploration of new lands.
Resource:
Maestro, Betsy and Giulio Maestro.
The Discovery of the Americas.
(Lothrop, 1990) (ISBN 0-68806837-5).