Grade 5 · secular
This is a year-long American history course that starts before Columbus and ends with the Constitution. Your child will learn that North America was full of established nations before Europeans showed up, then trace why Europeans crossed the ocean, how colonies grew up differently region by region (including the ugly reality of slavery and indentured servitude), why the colonies broke from Britain, how the war was actually won, and how the country built — then rebuilt — its own government. By June they should be able to read a real historical document and make an argument from it, not just recite dates.
The whole year, in plain English. Tap any unit to see every skill inside, nothing is hidden.
This unit undoes the idea that North America was empty before Europeans arrived. Your child learns five culture regions, matches real Native nations to each one, and figures out why people in different regions built different houses and ate different foods based on climate and what was around them.
Match each of five culture regions to its correct location on a North America map.
Recall the meaning of nation, resource, adapt, and culture region using the picture example taught for each.
Recall the name of at least one Native nation associated with each of three culture regions.
Explain why a specific housing style (e.g., longhouse, adobe, plank house) fits its region's climate and available resources.
Compare the food sources of two different culture regions and explain how geography shaped each choice.
Classify a new, previously unstudied Native nation's way of life into its correct culture region using given clues about climate and resources.
Summarize how an oral tradition passage and an archaeological description each serve as evidence about a Native nation's past.
Infer how a Native confederacy's council structure functioned as a form of government, based on a described example.
Critique the accuracy of the word 'discovery' when applied to Columbus's arrival, using evidence from two contrasting texts.
Produce a labeled regional map matching three Native nations to their region and one adaptation each.
This unit asks why Europeans crossed the ocean and what happened when they got here. Your child learns the shorthand 'God, gold, and glory' for explorer motives, then complicates it, traces more than one voyage (not just Columbus), and looks hard at the real scale of Native deaths from disease versus war.
Given a description of an explorer's actions, students name which motive (God, gold, or glory) it most reflects.
Students trace the route of Columbus's 1492 voyage and one non-Spanish voyage on a world map, labeling start, path, and landing.
Students sort a set of items (corn, horses, smallpox, wheat, potatoes) into 'moved to Europe' or 'moved to Americas' and explain why each item's movement mattered for the people who received it.
Students compare disease-caused deaths to war-caused deaths in the demographic collapse using a given data chart and explain which was the larger cause.
Given a Native-perspective account and a European-perspective account of the same contact event, students identify one detail unique to each account.
Students explain how each writer's motive shaped which details they included or left out, using one specific example from each of two paired accounts.
Students evaluate whether a claim about the Columbian Exchange ('it was a fair trade') is well supported, citing at least two specific pieces of evidence from the unit.
Given a brand-new, previously unseen pair of accounts describing a contact event never discussed in class, students write a paragraph explaining how motive shaped each account, citing one detail from each.
Your child compares New England, Middle, and Southern colonies — why they grew such different economies and lifestyles despite similar goals — and confronts that slavery and indentured servitude existed in every region, not just the South.
Students label the New England, Middle, and Southern colony regions on a blank map and list each region's climate and landforms.
Students explain why a region's climate and soil made a particular economy (fishing/shipbuilding, mixed farming/trade, or cash-crop plantations) more likely than others there.
Students classify a labor arrangement described in a short scenario as indentured servitude or chattel slavery.
Students summarize a primary-source-based narrative of daily life for an enslaved family, identifying what the system allowed and denied them.
Students trace a triangular trade route on a map and explain what goods or people moved along each leg.
Students compare the New England and Southern economies using two specific pieces of evidence each, explaining how geography drove the difference.
Given a description of an unfamiliar 18th-century colony-like settlement, students infer which labor system and economy it most likely used and justify the choice.
Students organize evidence from at least two regions into a three-column comparison chart (economy, geography, labor).
Students write a short essay arguing which region's way of life would have been hardest to change and support it with evidence from two regions.
This unit traces how colonial loyalty to Britain eroded step by step — taxes, boycotts, protests, violence — and asks whether the Revolution was really about ideas or about money and power. It's built around a shared timeline your child adds to over several days.
Students recall the meaning of cash crop, triangular trade, and self-government from Unit 3.
Students match each taught act (Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act) to the one worked-example reason Britain passed it.
Students explain why Britain taxed the colonies after the French and Indian War, using colonial trade as the reason.
Students classify specific colonial actions (boycott, petition, protest, violence) by type of response to British policy.
Students sequence five to six key events from the Stamp Act to the Boston Tea Party on an annotated timeline, showing escalation.
Students infer why a colonist might have chosen to remain a Loyalist despite rising grievances, using a primary-source excerpt.
Students compare Patriot and Loyalist perspectives on the same event to identify how point of view shapes a historical account.
Students critique the claim that the Boston Tea Party alone caused the Revolution, using the full timeline as evidence.
Students rank the two most important causes of the Revolution from an untaught set of colonial grievances drawn from a different colony's records, and defend the ranking in writing.
Students produce a claim-based paragraph ranking two causes of the Revolution and defending the ranking with timeline evidence.
This covers the actual Revolutionary War, from the Declaration through the war's end, built around two questions: why did the underdog win, and whose side would you have picked? It also looks at how women, Black Americans, and Native nations each navigated the war differently.
Match each of 6 Unit 4 grievances to its correct one-sentence description.
Given a real 1770s example (e.g. Stamp Act), identify the matching Unit 4 grievance word and state one reason the event was unfair.
Explain why the Declaration of Independence functioned as an announcement of separation, not only a list of complaints.
Following the teacher's modeled example at Saratoga, locate Yorktown on the Unit 3 regional map and repeat the same reasoning move to name its relevant geographic feature.
Independently interpret a new, unmarked battle location on the regional map and justify its geographic significance in one's own words.
Explain how the French alliance changed the balance of resources between the Continental Army and Britain after Saratoga.
Compare the wartime choices available to two different groups (for example, enslaved people and Native nations) during the Revolution.
Write a paragraph explaining one turning point's importance using a cause-and-effect connector.
Determine which side (Patriot, Loyalist, or neutral) a hypothetical colonist in an unfamiliar situation would most plausibly choose, and justify it with at least two risks.
Identify grievances within a short excerpt of the Declaration of Independence that connect to Unit 4 causes.
After the war, the new states had to actually run themselves, and this unit asks why they deliberately built a weak central government, then what happened when that weak government met real problems like Shays' Rebellion.
State that the Articles of Confederation were designed to give states more power than the central government.
Explain why fear of British tyranny led the framers to make the central government weak on purpose.
Classify specific weaknesses of the Articles (no power to tax, no national army, unanimous consent to amend) as either 'money problems' or 'power problems'.
Infer why a government with no power to tax could not pay soldiers or pay off war debt.
Summarize Shays' Rebellion as evidence that the Articles' weaknesses were causing real harm to real people.
Compare two accounts of Shays' Rebellion (one sympathetic to the farmers, one alarmed by the uprising) for point of view.
Explain why the states decided to call a convention to fix, rather than replace, the Articles.
Demonstrate compromise by resolving a concrete classroom scenario where two sides want incompatible things.
Apply the concept of compromise to a dispute between two states over a river boundary by first comparing its structure to the classroom scenarios, then proposing a solution.
Organize evidence about the Articles into a strengths-and-weaknesses chart.
Produce a short recommendation memo, in a child's voice, proposing changes to the Articles with reasons.
This is the big one: how the states built a stronger government after watching a weak one fail, and — just as important — who got left out of 'We the People.' It covers the three branches, checks and balances, federalism, the Bill of Rights, and an honest look at the Three-Fifths Compromise.
Students explain, using a specific Article of Confederation weakness named in Unit 6, which constitutional feature was designed to fix it.
Students recall the two competing plans (Virginia Plan, New Jersey Plan) and state what the Great Compromise combined from each.
Students name the job of each of the three branches of government (legislative, executive, judicial) using the term taught in direct instruction.
Students classify a described government action (e.g., a state law, a treaty, a court ruling) as a power of the states, the federal government, or shared under federalism.
Students match a real scenario (a law is passed, a law is enforced, a law is challenged in court) to the branch of government responsible and explain why that branch checks another.
Students explain why the Anti-Federalists demanded a Bill of Rights before ratifying the Constitution.
Students recall which specific amendment (from the three taught: speech, due process, unreasonable search) protects a scenario shown during direct instruction.
Students compare who was included and who was excluded from "We the People" in 1787 with who the Declaration of Independence (Unit 4) claimed had rights.
Students explain, in their own words, the honest reasoning behind the Three-Fifths Compromise and name whose interests it served.
Given an adapted, unfamiliar clause from a state constitution or a different historical document, students infer which branch or level of government it describes and justify the inference with textual evidence.
Students explain in their own words what an adapted Preamble excerpt and one Bill of Rights amendment each promise.
Students write a paragraph evaluating whether the Constitution kept the Declaration's promises for all people, using at least two pieces of evidence from the unit.
No new content here — this is the unit where your child pulls together everything from the whole year into one argument. They pick a big question about the founding period and defend a claim using evidence from at least three different units, in writing and out loud.
Recall the region, key nation or colony names, and one core vocabulary term for each of the first three units (Native nations, contact, colonial life) when given a blank timeline.
Recall the sequence of grievances, war events, and constitutional compromises from Units 4-7 when given a blank timeline.
Classify a given historical example (e.g., Wampanoag land use, indentured servitude, a specific grievance) as illustrating 'ideal' or 'reality' within the ideals-versus-reality theme.
Compare two Native nations' experiences of contact and colonization (e.g., a Northeast nation and a Southeast nation) using evidence from Units 1-3.
Explain how a specific grievance named in Unit 4 connects to a specific compromise made in Unit 7's Constitution.
Generate a claim answering one course essential question, supported by evidence drawn from at least three different units.
Identify a group or perspective from this year's story that received little attention in class texts, using a source neither assigned nor discussed this year.
Present a researched claim to classmates, sequencing evidence logically and speaking at an understandable pace.
From the parent guide
This is a year-long American history course that starts before Columbus and ends with the Constitution. Your child will learn that North America was full of established nations before Europeans showed up, then trace why Europeans crossed the ocean, how colonies grew up differently region by region (including the ugly reality of slavery and indentured servitude), why the colonies broke from Britain, how the war was actually won, and how the country built — then rebuilt — its own government. By June they should be able to read a real historical document and make an argument from it, not just recite dates.
Unit 1 · what to expect
This unit undoes the idea that North America was empty before Europeans arrived. Your child learns five culture regions, matches real Native nations to each one, and figures out why people in different regions built different houses and ate different foods based on climate and what was around them.
The full guide covers all 8 units: where kids get stuck, what to say, and how to tell it's working. Included with the course.
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