Students analyze a chart with the characteristics of the three colonial regions and determine a better way to visualize the information that shows the similarities and differences between the three.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2010256.Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The Declaration of Independence and the words “all men are created equal” provided thousands of enslaved Africans high expectations and many were ready to fight for the Country and their own personal freedom. Thousands of enslaved Africans impacted the war right from the start at Lexington and Concord, all the way to the end at Yorktown. This lesson will explore the life of James Armistead Lafayette, an enslaved African Virginian. Working as an undercover spy for George Washington, James risked his life to gather key intelligence about the British that helped secure an American victory at Yorktown. In this lesson, we will discuss whether his efforts in service of the American cause helped or hindered his ability to achieve emancipation.

The Declaration of Independence and the words “all men are created equal” provided thousands of enslaved Africans high expectations and many were ready to fight for the Country and their own personal freedom. Thousands of enslaved Africans impacted the war right from the start at Lexington and Concord, all the way to the end at Yorktown. This lesson will explore the life of James Armistead Lafayette, an enslaved African Virginian. Working as an undercover spy for George Washington, James risked his life to gather key intelligence about the British that helped secure an American victory at Yorktown. In this lesson, we will discuss whether his efforts in service of the American cause helped or hindered his ability to achieve emancipation.

After completing background research on what it was like to live during the colonial times students will be placed in a Minecraft world where they will have to collaborate with a group of classmates to build a colony that provides food and protection since the game will be played in survival mode.

In this lesson, students will organize and visualize data from indentured contract databases from virtualjamestown.org in order to come to some conclusions about the characteristics of indentured servants in early colonial America. They will make specific decisions about how to organize the data and how to best visualize the data. They will then use the data to draw conclusions about indentured servants in early colonial Virginia, culminating in a creative journal entry assignment. Additional lessons can have students search for and analyze data on the enslaved Africans of early colonial Virginia in order to compare and contrast the two forms of labor in colonial Virginia.