The Road to California - A Journey to Freedom
History-Social Science Content Standards Addressed
Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills - Kindergarten Through
Grade Five
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
- Students place key events and people of the historical era they are studying
in a chronological sequence and within a spatial context; they interpret timelines.
- Students correctly apply terms related to time, including past, present,
future, decade, century, and generation.
- Students explain how the present is connected to the past, identifying both
similarities and differences between the two, and how some things change over
time and some things stay the same.
- Students use map and globe skills to determine the absolute locations of
places and interpret information available through a map's or globe's legend,
scale, and symbolic representations.
Research, Evidence, and Point of View
- Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
- Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical
documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts,
photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.
- Students distinguish fact from fiction by comparing documentary sources
on historical figures and events with fictionalized characters and events.
Historical Interpretation
- Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain
the historical contexts of those events.
- Students identify and interpret the multiple causes and effects of historical
events.
United States History and Geography: Making a Nation - Grade Five
5.8 Students trace the colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of
the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800's with emphasis on the role of
economic incentives, effects of the physical and political geography, and transportation
systems.
1. Discuss the waves of immigrants from Europe between 1789 and 1850 and
their modes of transportation into the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys and through
the Cumberland Gap (e.g., overland wagons, canals, flatboats, steamboats).
4. Discuss the experiences of settlers on the overland trails to the West
(e.g., location of the routes; purpose of the journeys; the influence of the
terrain, rivers, vegetation, and climate; life in the territories at the end
of these trails).