Compare Spanish, French, and English approaches to early colonization of North America.
Spain, France, and England each approached North America differently in the 1500s and 1600s. Spain focused on conquest, resource extraction, and religious conversion -- Spanish conquistadors had already conquered the huge Aztec and Inca empires in the early 1500s, and in North America, Spain founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city in what is now the United States. Spanish colonists often used a system called encomienda, which granted colonists the right to demand labor and tribute from Native people living nearby.
France took a very different path, focused mainly on the fur trade rather than large-scale settlement. French colonists, like Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec in 1608, tended to build smaller trading posts, form alliances with Native nations, and rely on those partnerships to gather furs for European markets. England came later to permanent settlement in North America -- an early attempt at Roanoke, founded in 1587 off the coast of what is now North Carolina, vanished entirely by 1590 with no certain explanation, becoming known as the "Lost Colony." England's first lasting foothold would not come until Jamestown, founded twenty years later in 1607, the subject of next unit.
Mastery looks like: They can name one settlement and one distinctive approach for Spain, France, and England in early North America.
Common stumbles: Assuming all European colonizers used the same methods and goals; forgetting that Roanoke's fate is genuinely unknown, not a solved mystery.