4th Grade Social Studies: Colonial America: Unit Topic and Length

Sonyi Lopez
4th Grade Social Studies: Colonial America

Unit Topic and Length:
This unit will last between five and six weeks. It could serve as a bridge between units
like early colonization of America/Native Americans and the American Revolution.
Common Core Content Standards:

Standard 1: History of the United States and New York - Students will use a variety of
intellectual skills to demonstrate understanding of major ideas, themes, developments
and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep history from a variety
of perspectives.
Standard 3: Geography - Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate
their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world we live - local,
national, global - including the distribution of people, places and environments over the
Earths surface.
Standard 4: Economics - Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate
their understanding of how the US and other societies develop economic systems and
associated institutions to allocate scarce resources, how decision making units function
in the US and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity
problem through market and nonmarket mechanisms.
Standard 5: Civics, Citizenship and Government - Students will use a variety of
intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing
governments; the governmental system of the US and other nations; the US
Constitution; the basic civic values of American constitutional democracy; and other
roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including the avenues of participation.
Big Ideas/Enduring Understandings:

Common people managed to create an independent society which turned into a nation.
The people rebelled against a king who lived thousands of miles away, and successfully
achieved independence.
The people rebelled by writing articulate justifications of their dissatisfaction, boycotting
foreign-made goods, and eventually, with warfare.
Essential Question:
How did America become a country?
Content:
Key concepts that will be covered in this unit include:
French and Indian War
Reasons they wanted to be independent - taxation, conflicting religious beliefs
Stamp (1765) & Sugar Acts
Boston Tea Party (1773)
Treaty of Paris
Turning points during the time period that led to the Revolution
Declaration of Independence
Bill of Rights
Influence of key figures (John Adams, TJ, King George, Patriots vs. Loyalists)
Colonial Life - dress, food
Key knowledge students will acquire and demonstrate as a result of this unit include:
Students will be able efficiently use technology in order to study the causes and key
concepts of major historical events.
Students will use reference materials such as dictionaries and thesaurus to look and
better understand key terms which the unit addresses.
Students will be able to in a cooperative learning groups discuss how key vocabulary
from the unit can apply to specific nonfiction texts.
Students will be able to collaborate efficiently by allowing for each student to
demonstrate equal contribution.
Students will be able to extract commonalities amongst a group of individuals.
Students will be able to make text to self by comparing and contrasting themselves with
characters in the text.
Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of point of view by comparing
and contrasting.
Students will be able to make text-to-self connections through role play and developing
arguments to support opinions according to the role they have been assigned.
Students will be able to make text-to-world connections by visiting historical places and
making connections between the text and the world around them.
Students will be able to make inferences in regards to expectations about the field trip
based up knowledge gathered from multiple texts, assignments, and activities thus far.
Students will be able to align their inferences with their reflections on their experience at
the historical site.
Students will be able to recognize the importance of educational field trips and the
overall impact on their learning experiences.
Skills:
Key literacy skills that will be addressed in this unit include:
Investigating
Students will gain an understanding of content knowledge through investigating a
diverse range of informational texts and media.
Interpreting
Students will work through activities that have a real-world context in order to relate to
the point of view of individuals that lived during Colonial America.

Comparing
Students will compare current events to the struggles that common people endured to
foster a deeper understanding of new content knowledge.
Explaining
Students will reenact past practices such as writing about their dismay with the kings
actions, developing a logical argument supported with textual evidence and explaining
their rationale.
Analyzing
Students will analyze an array of political cartoons and authentic documents to facilitate
comprehension for the causes and effects of events in Colonial America.
Connecting
Students will connect the dissatisfaction of the common people to themselves by writing
about an injustice that was pressed upon them. Then, pupils will develop a course of
action and highlight similarities or differences with the way the common people reacted.
Vocabulary/Key Terms:
Articles of Confederation - An agreement between the thirteen colonies to form a
single government under the United States of America. It served as the country's first
constitution.
Bill of Rights - The first ten amendments to the Constitution that guaranteed the rights
of the individual.
Colony - An area of land that is under the control of a country, but not fully part of the
country.
Confederation - The group of thirteen states that united together.
Constitution - A set of documents and laws that define the government of a country.
Continental Congress - A group of delegates from each colony or state. It became the
first governing body of the United States of America.
Continental army - The official army of the United States that was established by the
Continental Congress.
Declaration of Independence - A document which announced that the American
colonies now considered themselves independent states and they would no longer
answer to the authority of Great Britain.
Democracy - A type of government that is ruled directly by the people.
Federalist - A person who supported the adoption of the Constitution.
Legislature - A branch of government that has the power to make laws.
Loyalist - A person in America who stayed loyal to Britain and the king.
Militia - Citizens who were prepared to fight. They held drills a few times a year and had
their own weapons and gear.
Minutemen - Part of the Massachusetts militia that was prepared to fight at a moment's
notice.
Patriot - An American that wanted independence from Britain.
Republic - A type of democratic government where people elect officials to represent
them.
Revolution - The overthrow of a government to establish a new system.

Stamp Act - A tax placed on the American colonies by the British government. It taxed
all sorts of paper documents including newspapers, magazines, and legal documents.
Treaty of Paris - A treaty signed by both the United States and Britain that ended the
Revolutionary War.
Initial Assessment:
Students will take a survey as an initial assessment of what their background
knowledge on Colonial America is. As we continue in our unit , students will complete a
KWL chart as an ongoing assessment.
Formative Assessment:
Students will create a formative assessment by writing about three specific causes of
the American Revolution. The writing pieces will be a part of a bound book. It will
include final copies of drafted and edited work about the causes and how they affected
the revolution. The writing pieces will be accompanied by student illustrations. The
work will be bound using yarn or string to make the books look like books from the time
period. It will showcase skills acquired during the unit like understanding cause and
effect, point of view, and
Final Performance Task:
The final performance task is the books final product. This will be graded based on
how the students edited and revised their writing, presentation (neatness and effort put
into illustrations), and content and depth of their writing.
Learning Plan and Activities:

Students will read Dear America series book, Standing in the Light: The Captive Diary
of Catharine Carey Logan, Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, 1763, alongside this unit to
integrate English into social studies. This book incorporates what the students already
learned about with Native Americans but shows the interaction that colonist may have
had with them during the time period. This book can be used to demonstrate concepts
like perspective and recording history.
Students will do a webquest, using sources like scholastic.com and brainpop.com, to
find out information about the causes of the American Revolution and the end of
Colonial America. This will be used as a the first step in research used to create their
books (formative assessment).
Students will work in teams to look up the words in the key vocabulary list. Students will
share definition of these terms. Students will discuss how these terms fit into the
creation of The Constitution. Students will create an in class Bill of Rights in groups.
Teacher will explain that the entire class must agree on these ten rights.
Students will connect the dissatisfaction of the common people to themselves by writing
about an injustice that was pressed upon them. Then, pupils will develop a course of
action and highlight similarities or differences with the way the common people reacted.
Students will work through activities that have a real-world context in order to relate to
the point of view of individuals that lived during Colonial America. For example, the
class may be split up into groups (Patriots vs. Loyalist) and work together in a shortresearch project. Using goal sheets to distribute responsibility among the students, they
will become accountable for their own learning and cite evidence to prepare for a
debate. Students will develop a logical argument for why the King is infallible or why the
king is fallible.
Students will record their thoughts in the form of a journal entry as to their expectations
of their field trip to the historic site. Students will use their knowledge gained from
multiple texts and prior assignments to make inferences about their field trip.
Students will visit a historic site Colonial Williamsburg where decisions were made
regarding the land and its first inhabitants, colonization, and conflict, revolution and the
new nation, political growth and western expansion. With a focus on United States
history,students see where our founding fathers (George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Mason) developed their ideas about liberty,
government by the people, and citizenship through an Electronic field trip.
Students will reflect on their field trip visit to the historic site which the class has visited.
The students will be asked to align their reflection with their expectations and explain
what they did expect, what they did not infer and how and why it may have been
different from what they expected. The students will also be required to explain why a
trip like this is beneficial to expanding their learning experience of the overall unit.
Resources:
Scholastic resource for Dear America series:
http://www.scholastic.com/teachdearamerica/colonial_books.htm#sthash.nv6BE7C7.dp
uf
scholastic.com
brainpop.com
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/
http://www.history.org/history/teaching/eft/index.cfm
Support for Struggling Students and ELLs:
Modified rubrics and assessment guidelines
Extra practice sheets geared toward targeting skills that students need to remediate
Visual representations of information to help inform students about students
(infographic, pictures, timelines)
Writing guides and checklists
Pre-due date: Students that need extra help with their writing can hand their work in at
an earlier date and go over their work with the teacher who will provide feedback for
improvement. That way, when the assignment is due, the student has a better chance
of getting a desirable grade while at the same time, has an opportunity to reinforce
writing skills.

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Sonyi Lopez

4th Grade Social Studies: Colonial America

Common Core Content Standards:

Big Ideas/Enduring Understandings:

the point of view of individuals that lived during Colonial America.

Revolution - The overthrow of a government to establish a new system.

Learning Plan and Activities:

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