Virginia SOL VS.3.d
The Standard
describing the interactions between the English colonists and the Indigenous people, including the role of the Powhatan in the survival of the colonists
Virginia Standards of Learning for History and Social Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how Powhatan people helped Jamestown settlers obtain food and adapt to the environment. They also describe how trade, cultural differences, land use, and competition led to cooperation and conflict.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students give accurate examples, such as exchanging food and goods, sharing local knowledge, and fighting over land and resources. They connect each example to an effect on Jamestown or Powhatan communities.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think the Powhatan always helped the settlers or were one small village. They may also assume conflict began immediately, or that both groups viewed land ownership in the same way.
How to Assess It
- Ask students to write one example of cooperation and one example of conflict, then explain how each affected Jamestown's survival.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Have pairs sort event cards into cooperation, conflict, and both, then connect each event to its effect with yarn.
Ask students to write: Why did Powhatan and English relations shift between cooperation and conflict?
Play a cause-and-effect matching game using cards about food, trade, land, disease, cultural differences, and conflict.
Study a Virginia waterways map and mark how rivers supported travel, trade, food gathering, settlement, and conflict.
Keep exploring
Related Standards
- VS.3.e
describing the hardships faced by settlers at Jamestown and the changes that took place to ensure survival, including, but not limited to trade with the Powhata...
- USI.3.b
describing cultural and economic interactions between Indigenous people and Europeans that led to cooperation and conflict.
- VS.2.e
describing the lives and cultures of Virginia’s Indigenous People leading to the present day.
- VS.2.d
describing the relationships and interactions of Virginia’s Indigenous People and their environment, circa 1600; and
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