The Mayflower Compact: Reading and Analyzing a Primary Source Document

The Mayflower Compact- Analyzing a Primary Source Document, is a 27 page standards aligned resource that provides your 6th-9th grade students with strategies for reading, understanding, and analyzing a challenging primary source document. Our students need help developing the skills to read complex materials, especially primary source historical documents. Students need practice on how to read a primary source document, and reading it once isn’t enough. Your students will participate in a close read of the primary source document four times: 1. for context and origins (source the document); 2. for meaning; 3. for the purpose (argument or thesis) of the document; and 4. read like a historian. 

Students will collaborate in deep discussions developing their critical thinking skills as they delve into their reading and analysis of the Mayflower Compact. Through this experience, they will find that their discussions become richer as they work through the questions provided for each of the 4 Reads. The follow up to the lesson, the multiple choice and short answer questions will offer students an opportunity to showcase what they learned.

This lesson can take 2 50-minute periods to complete.  However, if we want our students to feel confident enough to tackle primary source documents written in the past in unfamiliar English, we need to give them the tools to do so. Even so, I have provided an annotated version of the Mayflower Compact to help your English Language Learners, students on IEPs and 504 Plans,  and struggling readers.

The Mayflower Compact- Analyzing a Primary Source Document includes the following:

• History and Reading for History Standards, Objectives, and Learning Targets

• Essential Question: How do founding documents like the Mayflower Compact shape the principles and practices of governance in societies?

• 3 Guiding Questions: "What were the key motivations behind the drafting and signing of the Mayflower Compact?"; "How does the language and structure of the Mayflower Compact reflect the religious and political beliefs of the Pilgrims?"; and "What principles of governance are outlined in the Mayflower Compact, and how do they compare with other early democratic documents or principles?"

• Lesson 1: What are Primary and Secondary Sources

• Lesson Plan 2: Four Reads: Reading and Analyzing a Primary Source Document

• The Mayflower Compact in its original wording and in Plain English

• 4 Reads Questions and Answer Key

• Multiple choice and Short Answer Assessment and Answer Key