Death Spiral: Constructing the Jamestown Tobacco Profit Engine

Objective: Students will construct a causal model of Virginia's tobacco economy and use it to evaluate whether the colony's profits could have been achieved without making others — the Powhatan and indentured servants — pay the price.

Standard: E1.11-12.1 Analyze how economic incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups in the United States.

Lesson Content and Pacing (55 min)

Welcome (5 Min)
1. - - Reading quiz (previous night's homework - read source packet
    - Review previous day's exit ticket
Student Presentation: Temperance Flowerdew (5 min)
The Tobacco, Land and Labor Fly Wheel (15 min)
1. - Use the white board - Map out the cause and effect cycle
  - Solicit student help at each step: Cold call, take hands raised.
  - Start with Tobacco is profitable (center of the diagram) and build from there
  - Do the full cycle of labor or land first – build the full system before getting into the drivers and other impacts
Adapt the system (20 min)
1. - The Tobacco engine made the colony rich. It did it by taking the Powhatan's land and by working its laborers to death. Did it have to be that way?
Exit Ticket (10 min)
1. - Could the colony have made its profit without making someone else pay for it — or was making someone else pay the only way it worked?

Formative:

Quality of student contributions during construction of Tobacco profit engine model.

Quality of student contributions during discussion as students are asked to ‘adapt the system’

Summative:

Exit Ticket: Could the colony have made its profit without making someone else pay for it — or was making someone else pay the only way it worked?

Scored on: clear position, use of causal model, use of primary source evidence, reasoning on if harm could be separated from profit.

Documents

jamestownPrez.pdf

Presentation

jamestown.pdf

Source Packet

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