Use this November as an opportunity to go deeper than the mythology of Thanksgiving to tell a more complicated story about early American history! By placing Thanksgiving in its true context, this inquiry gives students a chance to revisit a story they may remember from their earliest days in school (making buckled pilgrim hats and cornucopias) to fill in gaps in their knowledge and add complexity to their understanding.

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This micro-inquiry lesson plan guides elementary students in exploring the relationship between the Pilgrims and Native Americans around the time of the first Thanksgiving by analyzing multiple sources. Through a compelling question—"Were the Pilgrims and Native Americans really friends?"—students engage with a painting, historical texts, and a historical marker to compare different perspectives on the relationship between early colonists and the native tribes. The lesson encourages critical thinking as students assess the narrative from the Pilgrims' viewpoint, contrast it with the Wampanoag perspective, and consider the complexities introduced by Indigenous reflections on Thanksgiving as a day of mourning.

This inquiry is designed to take as little as 20 minutes, but can be stretched with discussion to fill a full period. Micro-Inquiries are a perfect way to give students bite-sized inquiry experiences that fit into a single lesson. Unlike larger scale inquiries (e.g. DBQs, structured inquiries, etc.) these lessons are designed to drop into existing unit structures without monopolizing your time.

What the resource includes

• Complete with step-by-step instructions, engaging activities, and assessment tools, this micro-inquiry lesson is perfect for both novice and experienced educators looking to enhance their teaching toolkit. 
• This lesson includes all the sources and activities needed to guide students through a complete inquiry from hook to argument! The lesson includes
• Student handouts
• Teacher instructions
• Differentiated text sources for struggling readers
• A teacher Google slide deck for use in Google Classroom or PowerPoint.
• A student Google slide deck for use in Google Classroom or PowerPoint

Why it’s beneficial for students

• Students need regular exposure to inquiry experiences to improve their sourcing skills, literacy, and argumentation. By shrinking inquiry down to its core components, our micro-inquiries provide opportunities to practice more often, even daily!Students need inquiry experiences that broaden their thinking of the past and how it shapes our present. This lesson pushes them to think deeper about an important issue that persists in our own time and builds historical and contemporary empathy for diversity in our midst.

When/Where this resource works

• This lesson is a great way to do holiday themed lessons in an age-appropriate way. Because the lesson is short, it can easily fit into your existing scope and sequence near the holiday.
• It is a great way to practice source analysis due to the variety of sources, from visual sources to first hand journal entries, this inquiry creates opportunities to try different methods of source analysis to flex students’ interpretive muscles.

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