From forest to farm and back again
http://www.foresthistory.org/Education/Curriculum/Activity/activ2/activ2.html
A lesson plan for grades 5–6 Social Studies
In this lesson plan from the Forest History Society in Durham, North Carolina, students examine the history of land use from colonial settlement to the emergence of modern America at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. Students will examine, interpret, and analyze physical and cultural patterns of forest use and management over a 300-year period.
Students will:
- understand how the values and institutions of European economic life took root in the colonies;
- understand the impact of the American Revolution on politics, economy, and society;
- understand the impact of territorial expansion between 1801 and 1861 on communities in the east;
- identify and use processes important to reconstructing and reinterpreting the past, such as using a variety of sources, providing, validating, and weighing evidence for claims, checking credibility of sources, and searching for causality; and
- examine, interpret, and analyze the physical and cultural patterns and their interactions, such as land use, settlement patterns, and ecosystem changes.
Visit the Forest History Society’s Education Table of Contents for other modules in this series.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
Social Studies (2003)
Grade 5
- Goal 1: The learner will apply key geographic concepts to the United States and other countries of North America.
- Objective 1.06: Explain how people of the United States and other countries of North America adapt to, modify, and use their physical environment.
Grade 6
- Goal 1: The learner will use the five themes of geography and geographic tools to answer geographic questions and analyze geographic concepts.
- Objective 1.02: Generate, interpret, and manipulate information from tools such as maps, globes,charts, graphs, databases, and models to pose and answer questions about space and place, environment and society, and spatial dynamics and connections.
- Goal 13: The learner will describe the historic, economic, and cultural connections among North Carolina, the United States, South America, and Europe.
- Objective 13.01: Identify historical movements such as colonization, revolution, emerging democracies, migration, and immigration that link North Carolina and the United States to selected societies of South America and Europe and evaluate their influence on local, state, regional, national, and international communities.
