The Jamestown Draft

This year we've been able to add additional instructional time to our schedule in a period called Enrichment.  During this block, we do activities that enhance and 'enrich' what we are learning about in our core U.S. History class time.  It allows me to create and implement many new activities and lessons that I haven't had time for in past school years.  One new activity that we recently completed was called the "Jamestown Draft". 

I modeled this loosely on the concept of a sports draft, like that of the NFL, to get the kids engaged in the activity.  Each student randomly chose a slip of paper with a description of an occupation really held by one the settlers in the Jamestown colony.  Two 'team captains' were picked to be the leaders of two new fictitious American colonies.  The team captains had to decide, based on the 'value' of each occupation, who they wanted to draft into their colony.  The object was to build the strongest colony of workers and thus survive longer than the opposing colony. Here are two teams of colonial workers who have been 'drafted':

In the end, each team had to convince me why they were the strongest by explaining the value of each of their occupations.  It was a fun way to debate and learn a little more about colonial America!