His-tory! Not Her-story, Not Their-story!

Native American’s Place in History

Julie V. McCann

In this three to four week unit supplement, third graders will investigate the value of having multiple perspectives when studying a historic event. This supplemental unit will be adding the Native American perspective to Westward Expansion, to an existing pioneer unit. The purpose of the unit will be for students to see that for every event studied in history, there are more perspectives than the traditional European, male-dominated viewpoints commonly studied. Following Common Core standards, the children will be able to read, answer questions, engage in collaborative discussions, work in groups, participate in classroom activities, engage in readings and produce their own projects to help build their knowledge about this topic. Through studying Andrew Jackson, The Indian Removal Act, and the Trail of Tears, students will learn to “question everything” presented to them in their (history) education. At the conclusion of the unit, students will work to create a culminating project. These projects offer many choices and lend to multi-modal ways of learning. These original, open-ended, varied productions will be presented in class. Additionally, we may then present the projects to parents at a later date.