Find lesson plans, student activity sheets, interactive resources, classroom videos, and free professional development resources to expand your knowledge of colonial America.
Image: Catawba deerskin map showing several American Indian nations in northwest South Carolina, in a 1929 facsimile of the ca. 1724 original. (Library of Congress)
Grade Level: 3–5
Recommended Time for Completion: Three 45–minute periods
The three lessons in this unit explore the voyage of the Pilgrims to America aboard the Mayflower, the writing of the Mayflower Compact, and the origins of Thanksgiving. Students will read or listen to a historical interpretation and read a legal document and correspondence. You will assess their understanding through class discussions and their graphic and written responses on activity sheets.
Students will discuss how colonists and Wampanoags viewed land, nature, and life differently, and how these differences shaped colonial America.
Students will grapple with the various aspects of transatlantic trade from the commodities traded, to the various routes, and to the perpetrators and victims of this trade.
Becoming the United States: Colonial America to Reconstruction (based on a traveling exhibition of the same name) is a collection of short narrated videos that will give your students an overview of key events and figures related to American history.
Video 01 will provide your students with a general introduction to colonial America.
Course Features
Led by John Fea, Professor of History, Messiah University
This course focuses on British, French, Spanish, and Dutch colonization in North America, examining the development of new markets, the birth of race-based slavery, groundbreaking religious and intellectual movements, and the formation of Anglo and African colonial identities.
In these lectures, geared toward elementary and middle school teachers, scholars focus on the people, ideas, and events that made America into a cultural, social, and political reality.
Lecture by Denver Brunsman, Associate Professor of History, The George Washington University
Resources referenced in the lecture
Lecture by David Silverman, Professor of History, The George Washington University
Resources referenced in the lecture
