Columbus Day

On Monday, Room 408 learned that it was a holiday, but they didn't know what holiday.  We started our mini-inquiry by studying the following painting.

First we shared what we saw and what we noticed about the painting, which led to many inferences about what was happening and why.  After our discussion, we took time to draw and write about our thoughts.

Our ideas expressed the tiny things we noticed, like why we thought the ships were in the water in the background.

Many of us thought it might be a war happening.

Some of us even thought it might be a specific war, like the Canadian War:

Still others thought it might be purely biblical.

You also can see how powerful our schema is (what we think we know)--Charlie had just gone to a Medieval Times restaurant and connected this new learning to the painting. 

"I'm running." (left)     "I surrendered." (right)       "Good." (middle)

Next we read a few books about Columbus.

We learned that he didn't give up his dream to explore, even after some kings told him he couldn't do it.  We also learned that he made a mistake...he didn't realize that there were big chunks of land between where he left from Spain and where he thought he would land in Asia, so he ended up bumping into the Bahamas, thinking it was the Indies (China and India)!

We learned that when he landed, he claimed the land for Spain--but Room 408 thought that was unfair, since there were already native people living there in North and South America!  We also learned that unfortunately Columbus made some bad choices and enslaved some of the native people.

We ended our mini-inquiry by adding a poem about the history of Columbus Day to our Poetry Notebooks.

What do you think about Columbus?