February 11-15, 2008

Objective: Students will demonstrate knowledge of westward expansion and reform in America from 1801-1861 by identifying the geographic and economic factors that influenced the westward movement of settlers.

Essential Understandings

Essential Questions

Essential Knowledge

 Westward migration was influenced by geography and economic opportunity

 

What factors influenced westward migration?

 

Why did people want to go West?

GEOGRAPHIC AND ECONOMIC FACTORS THAT INFLUENCED WESTWARD MOVEMENT WERE:

 

  1. Population growth in the eastern states.
  2. Availability of cheap, fertile land
  3. Economic opportunity such as gold (Gold Rush), logging, farming and freedom (for runaway slaves)
  4. Cheaper and faster transportation (rivers and canals, Erie Canal, and steamboats
  5. Knowledge of overland trails such as the Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail
  6. Belief in the right of Manifest Destiny: The idea that expansion was for the good of the country and was the right of the country.

 

 

Resources:

Interactive notebook and flash cards (Teacher created)- Note taking guide (teacher created)

Internet web sites for review, practice and information on classroom page

Supplemental books: History Alive, Highlights in History in the early 1800s, Life as a Pioneer (F. Schaffer)Oregon and Santa Fe Trails (Mark Twain Media Publications)History Pockets (Evan Moor): The Prairie Primer,

Literature Integration:

  • Little House on the Prairie Series * Dear America: Across The Prairie, Sante Fe Trail
  • Josefina * My America: Josiah’s Oregon Trail
  • Cobblestone Magazine articles * Gold Rush (2 copies)
  • Dear America Series * TCM Pioneers (Lower Group)
  • Magic Tree House (Buffalo)

United Mainstreaming:

  • Go West: The Growth of a Nation (Manifest Destiny and Westward Expansion, Glorious Story
  • Oregon Trail

Little House on the Prairie Videos

 

 

Primary Sources: Frontier Diary

  • Narcissa Whitman (Pioneer Missionary)

 

 

Activities:

  • Work with Primary Source Documents (first order), (second Order)
  • Photographs
  • Song/Poem sheet
  • Gold Rush posters
  • Ghost town – economic decline –Geography change
  • Narratives – journals, literature, diaries

Create Your own Graphic Organizer

  • Using text passages, students create a graphic organizer to demonstrate understanding of key ideas
  • Rubric used from SOL 8C Industrial Revolution

EXTENDED ACTIVITIES:

  • Depending on time and paper supply - pocket book of trails west and Gold Rush
  • Pack for your trip based on measurements of the wagon
  • Encountering dangers
  • Jigsaw topics (mountain men (Jim Bridger Kit Carson Pioneer/mountain man), trail guides (Charles Goodnight), Buffalo Bill

Music – Listen and learn pioneer songs (Wee Sing)

 

  • Books for story telling (written by teacher)