Clash of Cultures Activity
OBJECTIVES
Students will draw their own fort and identify its parts using historic forts such as Fort Caroline, the Castillo de San Marcos, and Fort Matanzas as examples. This activity may allow students to make connections between other sites they have visited and make comparisons between the building materials used and geographic location.
AGE
3rd-8th grade
ENHANCES
VA.A.1.2, VA.B.1.2, SS.A.4.2.1
TIME AND PLACE
Classroom post-visit activity, 30 minutes (*may require extra research)
WORKSHEET
Build Your Own Fort pdf (113k)
This file must be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader. To download this program (free), click here.
BACKGROUND
The worksheet provided has pictures of three forts: Fort de la Caroline, the Castillo de San Marcos, and Fort Matanzas. Explain that the Castillo de San Marcos is located in St. Augustine and was built by the Spanish more than a hundred years after Fort Caroline; that Fort Matanzas is south of St. Augustine and was a Spanish outpost for the Matanzas Inlet, where long before its construction many of the French soldiers and settlers from Fort Caroline lost their lives.
Ask the students to do this activity with the mindset of a French soldier who just arrived in Florida, who had to decide what materials to use and how to use them, without knowing anything about the land. On your fieldtrip the ranger would have talked to the students about finding building materials in the natural surroundings, which for the settlers of Fort Caroline included mostly wood and earth, which is vastly different from the coquina used at the Castillo. Coquina must be quarried and that requires a substantial amount of time, planning and knowledge. Why would coquina not have been a good choice for the French settlers at Fort Caroline? Remind students that the forts were used for war, but were also important for the protection of people as temporary homes in times of bad weather or until their individual homes were built.
FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS
This activity could be used with middle school students as well as upper elementary students. Following the same instructions, students could either create their own fort or, research and draw or label a historic fort as a research project. Small groups could make a physical model of a fort, label its parts, and give a presentation to the class.
EVALUATION
This activity does not have a right or wrong answer. Justifying their choices for the most important aspects of a fort allows them to use role-playing and their imaginations. They may even come up with important parts of the fort or settlement on their own!
