Rebecca Gulick
4th-5th grade
Social Studies

PURPOSE:

The settlement of the United States is one of the most important subjects that is covered in school. Many time the reasons behind the settlements have to do with the land. Even today there are many places that are uninhabited because of the physical characteristics: the land won’t produce, it is marshland, the weather is too extreme, etc. My project will cover why and how the physical environment affects the different types of settlements across the United States for 4th or 5th grades.

NATIONAL STANDARDS:

Geography Standard No. 3 - How to analyze the spatial organization of people, places and environments on the Earth’s surface. The students will be able to understand why certain regions of the Earth were settled and how different environments affected those settlements.
Geography Standard No. 4 - The physical and human characteristics of places. The students will understand how different types of land, weather, and geographic affected the different types of settlements.
Geography Standard No. 7 - The Physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth’s surface. The student will understand how different weather patterns affected settlements and the reasons for that type of settlement.

OBJECTIVES:

The students will be able to analyze the physical characteristics of different regions of the United States and how these physical characteristics affected settlements across the States.

PROCEDURES:

Day 1

I. Sponge activity -- Put on the board the question "Think of what where the perfect place would be to live." Ask the students some open ended and leading questions such as: What type of land would it be? Would you grow things there? How many people would be there? What would the climate be like? How would different climates affect their choice? Would there be much vegetation? What type of vegetation would it be? Would their be any wildlife? What kind?, etc. Have them write down their answers in paragraph form of about a page in length. 30 min

II. Let some of the students read their papers out loud. Compare the different types of characteristics described by the students. Make a semantic map of the different types of characteristics. Use this to show how different people want/need different arrangements of the characteristics to survive. Ex. A farmer prefers a warmer climate, fertile soil, and plenty of rain whereas a miner would prefer an area rich with coal or natural gas deposits and with dry weather. 30 min

III. Closing activity: Tell the students to go back over the essay they wrote at the beginning of the class and tell them to add the type of settlers that would have lived there. Ex. Farmer, Miner, rancher.

IV. Materials: Paper, Pen

Day 2: The settlement of the Thirteen Colonies

The borderers who thronged across the [mountains], the restless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers...were lead by no one commander... they were not carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedience to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts...they made the wilderness home for their children.(1)

Sponge Activity: Have the students look at a map of the US. By reading the map have them find an area similar to what they described as the perfect place to live.

II. This day will be taken up with the settlement of the US east of the Appalachian Mts. The Thirteen Colonies.

I. Guided practice -- When the United States were being settled the different land characteristics affected how the United States were settled.

A) THE NEW WORLD ENVIRONMENT; 18th century --- The first settlers were mainly from Spain, France, and England. They settles in four main areas.

I. Four geographical areas - Colonial divisions

A. South- Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia

B. New England- Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island

C. Middle- New York , New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware D. West- no organized colonies

II. Geographical features

A. South
1. wide coastal plains, shallow bays, and harbors, long navigable rivers, rich soil
2. Hard to start in the south
3. Farming expensive --labor and shipping costs high
4. Plantation- the economic and social structure of the south
5. Cotton Kings before the Civil War.

B. New England (northern colonies)
1. No coastal plains, poor stony soil, fast flowing rivers, heavily forested, many natural harbors
2. Shipping capital of America
3. Cities develop, but not many farms
4. Not much labor needed

C. Middle
1. Some coastal plains
2. Very few rivers - extremely long and easily used --opened interior of continent---Susquehanna River, Baltimore, Maryland; Hudson River, New York, NY; Delaware River, Philadelphia, Penn.;
3. Became the doorway to the west through its rivers.

D. West
1. Unexplored region of forested mountains -- Appalachian Mts.
2. Natural boundary blocked the move west at this time.
3. Mainly mountainman and trappers went west of the mountains at this time.

Materials: United States map pens paper

Day 3: The Westward Movement

Were all the teeming regions of the dawn Unpeopled now? What devastating need Had set so many faces pale with greed Against the sunset? Not as men who seek Some meed of kindness, suppliant and meek, These hungry myriads came. They did not look, And whatsoever pleased them, that they took. -John G. Neiharft, The Song of the Indian Wars(#1)

Sponge: Put on the board: Why did the settlers want to move West?

I. The settlements west of the Appalachian Mts. and east of the Mississippi River at the beginning of the 1800s.

A) The lure of the old South and North West.
1. The old Northwest: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri
2. The old Southwest: Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana

B) Geographical Features
1. North west a)land was covered with thick forests of oak trees and brush b)rich farmland c)rivers made it easy to travel and transport goods d)land was cheap
2. Southwest a)The black belt b) land was perfect for growing cotton c) growing season was 200 days d)

II. The Erie Canal

A) 363 miles long, from Albany, on the Hudson River, to Buffalo, on Lake Erie

B)One of the most important arteries of transportation in the US
1) It was safe, cheap and reliable transportation
2) Exports now went to New York instead of down the Mississippi to New Orleans

Materials pens paper

Day 4: Texas and the Great Southwest

I. "I Have Traveled near five hundred miles across Texas, and am now enabled to judge...the soil, and the resources of the Country, and I have no hesitancy in pronouncing it the finest country to its extent upon the globe...There can be no doubt but the country east of the River Grand of the north would sustain a population of ten millions of souls." -Letter from Sam Houston to Pres. Andrew Jackson , February 13, 1833(#1)

II. The Great Southwest A) Texas, New Mexico, Arizona
B) Settled first by the Spaniards
1) By 1770 the Spanish domain, New Spain, had spread far north from Mexico City.
2) Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 3) Texas won independence in 1836.

C) Geographical Features
1. Wide open spaces were ideal for ranching
2. Rich lowlands 3. Pine forests (East Texas)
4. Land was good for producing corn, sugar, cotton and supporting animals, such as diary and poultry farms.

III. To the Pacific
A) California and Oregon
1)Oregon
a) Fertile land
b) Settled by Americans determined to find the paradise that trappers and missionaries said existed
c) Traveled the Oregon Trail that started in Independence, Missouri

2) California
a) gold lured thousands of prospectors to California in the 1840s

Materials pens paper

Day 5: Settling the Plains

Who was that early sodbuster in Kansas? He leaned at the gatepost and studied the horizon and figured what corn might do next year and tried to calculate why God ever made the grasshopper and why two days of hot winds smother the life out of a stand of wheat and why there was such a spread between what he got for grain and the price quoted in Chicago and New York. -Carl Sandburg,

The People, Yes (#1)
I. Between the 1860s and the 1890s was the greatest migration in US history. Millions of settlers penetrated the vast plain between the Rockies and the Mississippi.

II. The Plains
1. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
A) rich farm land
B) treeless (did not have to clear the land)
C)improvement of farm equipment helped settle the land
D) Became the nation’s breadbasket

Materials pens paper.

Day 6: Lab Work

The students need to understand how to use the Internet and its resources. Take them to the lab and show them the Lewis and Clark Maps:

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/home.html

Through this they will be able to see why parts of the states were settled.

Assignment: Students are to find at least five states or parts of states that they described as the perfect place to live. They can use the references in the library and the Web site:

http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/states.html

Assessment: Write a paper on the features that they like and dislike about these places.

Day 7

Exam!!

Attachments:

1. Vocabulary words: These are words or phrases that might be new to the students that they will need to know to understand the lesson. 2. The shifting frontier: Map that shows the different waves of settlements from 1760 to 1850. 3. The Westbound Trails: Map of the main trails that settlers took on their westward journey. 4. The waves of settlement: Map that shows the waves of settlements from 1760 to 1850.

Extensions:

History: Let the students trace the movement west on a US map with a ball of yarn and tacks.

Science: Compare the different climates of the different regions of the States.

Social Studies: Incorporate the social aspects of why the settlers moved westward.

English: Have the students imagine that they were the original settlers of the United States. Let them write a story about the adventures they would have while moving west.

Art: Let the students draw their own map of what trail they would take to go west. Have them mark where memorable events occurred while on the trail.

For fun: Have the game The Oregon Trail available for the students when they have completed their work.

Bibliography

Chaitin, Peter M. The Great American West. The Reader’s Digest Association. 1977.

Rubenstein, James M. An Introduction to Human Geography. Prentice-Hall Inc. Fifth Edition. 1994.

Geography resource for the teacher.
http://www.gsu.edu/~gegtah/links.html (April 10, 1997)

Lewis and Clark Maps.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/home.html (April 13, 1997)

Maps of the States.
http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/states.html (April 6, 1997)

Vocabulary Words territory settlers state colony sodbusters New Spain Forty-niners plantation Nation’s Breadbasket gold rush migration Black Belt

Created 4/19/97

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