Contact and Consequence: Social Studies Unit 2, Grade 5 (Letters & Devotion)

Description

Contact and Consequence is Unit 2 of The American Story Begins: Peoples, Contact, and a New Nation (Grade 5), the Letters & Devotion Social Studies course, complete in one printable PDF: 8 lessons, the unit check-up and the answer key, 42 pages.

• The three explorer motives (God, gold, glory) as applied to specific voyages
• The routes of the Columbus 1492 voyage and one non-Spanish exploration voyage
• The Columbian Exchange of specific crops, animals, and disease across the Atlantic
• The relative scale of epidemic disease versus warfare in Native population decline after contact
• Two paired accounts (one Native, one European) of a single named contact event
• The relationship between a writer’s motive and the details chosen in a first-hand or adapted account
• The fairness claim about the Columbian Exchange, weighed against crop, disease, and population evidence
• A novel pair of contact-event accounts not used in any prior lesson

Every lesson is written for a parent with no teaching background: it opens with a short script to read aloud, names the specific wrong idea a student is likely to reach for and how to correct it, and closes with a practice sheet you may copy for your household. Scripture references are King James Version throughout. Black-and-white, 8.5 x 11 in. The whole year of this course is also in this store as a single book.

AI note: The written content of this resource was drafted with AI tools, then reviewed and edited by the author.