SOCIAL STUDIES/WRITING
Columbus Journals

Submitted by: Anonymous
From: Fitchburg, MA
Date Submitted: March 1, 2003

After reading about Columbus trips and discussing the hardships Columbus and his men experience,students then imagined that they were one of those men on Columbus ships. I burnt the edges of white unlined paper and soaked it in tea overnight. Each sheet looked old and vintage looking. This is what really motivated each student to want to write. They wrote about their experience, while on the ship, while building the ships, while loading the ships with cargo, while being on a ship for many months at a time. The accounts sounded extremely vivid. Each student wrote, edited and printed out their personal account while pretending they were on the Nina, the Pinta or the Santa Maria.