Images and stories of the Puritans fill our national folklore. If your students have ever sat through a Thanksgiving Dinner, they'll arrive with some sense of this people and their history (however accurate or inaccurate it may be). 

Your challenge will lie in adding a layer of complexity to their sense of the Puritans and their New England settlement. There is, after all, more to Puritan culture than turkey and cranberry sauce—especially since we can't becertain that either of these dishes was served at the first (or second, or third) Thanksgiving.