Lost Colony Resources

Roanoke Island is best known for its historical significance as the site of Sir Walter Raleigh‘s attempt to establish a permanent English settlement with his Roanoke Colony in the late 16th century. The fate of the final group of colonists has yet to be ascertained, leading to the continuing interest in what became known as the “Lost Colony” for over 400 years.

-wikipedia Roanoke entry

LearnNC, as always, has an excellent collection of Lost Colony resources: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/161 which includes the following list of resources, among others:

• Roanoke Island This is an informative web page about Roanoke Island, with links to pages about the Lost Colony and Sir Walter Raleigh.
• The Roanoke Voyages: A Mystery Story For Young People A detailed story written for kids about the Lost Colony. It is suitable for grades 4-6.
• More about the Lost Colony Detailed information from the North Carolina State Library.

The National Park Service has a mini-site called The Roanoke Voyages – A Mystery Story For Young People at http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/voyage.htm that would be interesting reading.

How Do You Lose a Colony – this is a thorough and informative site that covers background information, people involved, theories, web links, and a resources page. This would be a good resource for students to use for research. [http://library.thinkquest.org/J002559/]

The nature of the mystery lends itself to having students act as investigators that come up with ideas of what happened. Students could review existing theories of what happened on Roanoke and then explain what they think happened.

A timeline is a good product idea, students could sequence events involved. There are excel templates that make timelines and there are free online timeline makers as well.

There are several webquests about the Lost Colonly out on the web. These are a good source of both project ideas, resources, and links. Here are a few to look at:

• http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webquests/roanoke/
• http://www.mcs.k12.nc.us/wq/rcooper/colony/task.htm