Recall and connect the founding stories, regions, economies, and honest history of Native relations and slavery studied in the colonial unit.
This week ties together the whole colonial unit. You have followed the founding struggles of Jamestown and Plymouth; compared New England, Middle, and Southern colonies; pictured a colonial child's daily life; traced how cooperation with Native nations gave way to serious conflict; learned the honest, hard history of slavery's arrival and growth; followed the triangular trade that connected it all economically; and found the early seeds of self-government in the House of Burgesses and New England town meetings.
The big idea underneath the whole unit: the thirteen colonies were not one simple story, but many different, connected stories happening at once -- stories of survival, opportunity, and self-government, and, alongside them, real and serious harm to Native nations and enslaved people. Holding all of these threads together honestly is exactly what a good historian does, and it is exactly what you will need as the story moves next into growing conflict between the colonies and Britain.
Mastery looks like: They can name the three colonial regions, describe founding stories for two colonies, and state at least one honest fact each about slavery and Native relations.
Common stumbles: Remembering isolated facts without connecting them; describing colonial life as either entirely positive or entirely negative instead of holding the full, honest picture.