Charting the Discovery of the Americas

Third graders demonstrate knowledge of exploration by naming and describing accomplishments of explorers. They use the internet to find corresponding information on the explorer and fill in a chart that is provided. Students also...

Close your colonial America unit with a performance-based assessment. Class members will show their proficiency in several skills including using details to back up inferences, determining the meaning of words in context,...

What was life like in colonial America? Follow this lesson and your pupils will find out what people in colonial times did for work and for fun. Ask learners to compare and contrast the two texts and explain what the reading helped them...

Third graders "travel" from Europe to North America as Columbus did. They organize the information into chronoglogical order.

Fourth graders work in small groups to become experts on different colonial trades in the eighth instructional activity of this unit. Working toward the long-term goal of writing a piece of historical fiction, young scholars read...

In the tenth instructional activity of this unit, young scholars learn to categorize information as they continue researching their colonial trade. During guided practice, the teacher models how to read informational text slowly while...

The twelfth instructional activity of this unit builds on the skills developed in the previous instructional activity, as fourth graders continue their quest to become experts on colonial trade by listening to interviews with historical...

Voices from the past. Young scholars listen to a podcast interview with a historical re-enactor as they continue their research in the eleventh instructional activity of this unit on colonial trade. Applying their close reading skills,...

The seventh lesson plan in this unit on colonial trade assesses fourth graders' ability to use details from an informational text to make inferences and create a piece of informative writing. The included assessment begins with learners...

Students investigate the principal explorers of the New World and the contributions that they made to the European knowledge about America, the development of rivalries, and the effects on Native American cultures.