This lesson will help students think about the effects of the Columbian Exchange, particularly the exchange of disease as it affected the psychology of the Europeans and Native populations in the early settlement of the Americas.

UNIT LEVEL OBJECTIVES

In 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew of ragtag, starving, near-mutinous sailors washed ashore in the Bahamas, "discovering" the New World and claiming ownership of it for the Spanish monarchy. The Taino Native Americans Columbus encountered—whose homeland he claimed for Spain—must have thought he was mad, suffering delusions of grandeur.

But as we know, Columbus' arrival was indeed the first act in a centuries-long drama of colonization and conquest in which Europeans and their descendents largely displaced the Taino and their fellow Native Americans while remaking the Western Hemisphere in their own image.

• How and why were the European colonists able to achieve such total dominance in far-off continents?

• Did the Europeans' power lie in their technological superiority, especially in weapons of war?

• Or was the European advantage ideological, rooted in the aggressive expansionism of crusading Christianity or the profit motive of entrepreneurial conquistadors?

• Was it simply a matter of the Europeans proving more brutally committed to a genocidal fight to the finish?

Learning outcomes

• Students will analyze the effects of the Columbian Exchange.

• Students will use higher order thinking to imagine the psychological effects of disease on both native cultures and the Europeans.

• Students will participate in an interactive discussion.

• Students will analyze the various "first impressions" of the European to the new native population and the effects that had on their perception of the new culture.

• Students will build a model of the products/animals/people and diseases that were "exchanged" during this time period

• Students will make an infographic image of a modern day meal and identify the origins of each food item within the meal

• Students will be able to explain through examples the modern day remnants of the Columbian Exchange on food

The European encounter of the new world brought many changes to both sides of the Atlantic. Students will follow the directions of the Columbian Exchange project to visibly display the exchange/transfer/forced movement of various items between the cultures.