Teacher’s Guide to Across the Ocean (2027 edition)

 

Welcome to the teacher’s guide to the TN History for Kids booklet Across the Ocean (2027 edition).

This booklet is the first of three booklets created to meet the 2027 Tennessee social studies standards. The 3rd grade 2019 Tennessee social studies standard covered a combination of world geography, colonial history and Tennessee history, while the 3rd grade 2027 standards cover U.S. history from the explorers to about 1840.

Please do not copy the booklets. That is a violation of our copyright and makes it difficult for our organization to exist. The reason we sell them for only $3 is so teachers will not copy the booklets.

One of the reasons we hope that this teacher’s guide is useful is that if you click on the images here, you can them show larger versions to you students.

 

Chapter One: Age of Discovery

 

 

Click on the image on the right to see a larger version of the map on page 6 and….

Click on the image on the left to see a larger version of the map on page 7.

For more detail about de Soto and his journey across the present-day Southeastern United States, click here for the TN History for Kids virtual tour “In Search of de Soto.”

 

SIDEBAR: What Columbus Thought

 

Teaching third graders about Columbus is not easy. But if your students can understand this sidebar, they will know more than most American adults know about Columbus.

Also, there are replicas of the Nina and Pinta, and they sometimes show up in river ports such as Chattanooga and Knoxville. Click here to learn more about this.

On the left is a sign we saw on the replica of the Nina. Before you show your students this sign, ask them to plan a journey across the ocean in a sailing vessel in 1500. What PROVISIONS would they need to bring?

Then click on this image.

Obviously, the most important thing to bring is WATER — because humans can make it without food a lot longer than they can make it without water!

The follow up question you might ask students is where ship crews could get water while en route. The obvious answer might be from the ocean, but that’s the wrong answer. The correct answer would be to set up ways to gather rainwater — which is what crews did.

 

Chapters Two through Four:

 

There’s a lot of information in these chapters about Native American culture. This can be very difficult to summarize because there isn’t really one “Native American” culture. There is Cherokee culture, Navajo culture, Chickasaw culture, etc.

Here are places to get more information:

Click here for a virtual tour of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in North Carolina. If you are able to make it there, make sure you check out the nearby Oconaluftee Indian Village, where you can step into and explore things such as a summer house and a council house.

Speaking of Cherokee culture, you can also learn a lot of it at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum and at occasional powwow events such as the ones put on Indian Creek Productions, Red Clay State Historic Park and Pinson Mounds State Archaeological Park.

 

Click here for a virtual tour In Search of the Chickasaw nation.

And click here to learn the fascinating story behind about Tennessee’s small Choctaw Community.

 

 

 

Chapter Five: Lost, Found Colonies

Click here for a history channel story from 2015 about new developments in the search to find out what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Here, on the right, is the photo on page 28. You might show this photo your students and ask them the following questions:

Why are these people are digging so carefully? [They are digging carefully so they won’t damage anything they find.]

Since they are digging at the former site of the Roanoke Colony, why might they be looking for? [Possibly human remains or signs that human were here, including the bones of an animal that humans might have eaten.]

Also, if you search on the internet for more information about Jamestown, you may get confused. Let me try to clear this up: The actual site of the Jamestown Colony is now a national park called Historic Jamestowne, where the land and structures are heavily protected and where little living history is staged. Because it is so geographically close to the site of the Battle of Yorktown, this park is administratively run as part of another national park called Yorktown Battlefield, which contains and preserves parts of the actual battlefield.

Meanwhile, there are several privately-run historic attractions in the same area that heavily incorporate living history into what they do (and I recommend all of them). One of them is Jamestown Settlement. Another is the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. And a third is Colonial Williamsburg, which is the closest thing to a “living history theme park” in America.

On page 30 I mention Plymouth Rock. This may lead to some obvious questions such as “How big is this rock?” and “Where can you see this rock?”

On your right is a photo of Plymouth Harbor. The dignified structure in the middle houses Plymouth Rock.

 

On the left is a photo of the actual Plymouth Rock. You can see why it appears on lists of the most disappointing tourist attractions. But to be fair, Plymouth Rock used to be larger. Apparently a lot of people chipped parts of it off as souvenirs in the 1800s.

 

 

 

Chapter Seven: American Colonies

 

There’s a lot for a third grader to learn in this chapter, and if they come away knowing how to identify the 13 colonies, their future teachers will be grateful.

 

So click on the right to blow up the map on page 40 and click on the left to blow up the blank map on page 47.

There’s a lot of material packed into this chapter. Here are some supplemental questions that you might want to ask your students:

Who is Georgia named for? {King George II of England]

What colony was known for its toleration of Catholics? [Maryland]

What colony was associated with Quakers? [Pennsylvania]

What colony was split into two colonies? [North and South Carolina]

 

Chapter Eight: Town Meetings

 

The photos on pages 48 and 51 are both amazing, which is why we have posted them here.

Also, on page 50 it is mentioned that Dorchester, Massachusetts, was the site of the first elementary school in America. It was called Mather School.

Get this: Mather School is STILL an operating elementary school! Click here to be taken to its website.

 

 

 

Chapter Nine: Servants and Slaves

 

Students will learn more about slavery in grades 4, 5, 8 and the high school U.S. history class. They will learn more about the slave trade, and about why and how slavery spread across the United States, and about the conditions of slavery.

It is, however, important that third graders learn the basics about what slavery was and how it was similar and different than indentured servanthood. After all, more than half of the colonists who came to the United States came as indentured servants–click here to learn more about this.

 

SIDEBAR: Life on the Frontier

 

The best way to learn some of the content in this chapter is to go to a living history event that covers the frontier period. Here are a few suggestions, in no particular order:

* Rocky Mount, in Sullivan County

* Daniel Smith Days at Rock Castle, in Sumner County

* Heritage Days in Manskers Station, in Davidson County

* The Museum of Appalachia, in Anderson County

* Sycamore Shoals State Park, in Carter County

Finally, if you are looking for more questions to ask you students about the content in this chapter, here are three:

What are livestock? [Animals that are kept on farms]

Why did people on the frontier salt meat? [So it could be eaten weeks or months later]

Why did people used to have more children than they do today? [So they could help with farmwork]

(Oh, and if anyone doubts that people used to have more children than they do today, my family can vouch for it. On all sides of my family tree, people before about 1920 had 10 kids, or 12 kids, or even 16 kids. Starting about 1930, these numbers reduced drastically. My grandfather (born 1904, died 1965) was one of TEN siblings in Knoxville. These 10 siblings combined had only 12 children!)

 

Chapter Ten: The 21-Year-Old Major

 

It may be obvious, but I want third graders to understand just how YOUNG George Washington was when he led men into battle and then surrendered at Fort Necessity. Although third graders may not think so, twenty-one is YOUNG!

Click here for the official website of Fort Necessity National Battlefield.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a great place to learn about the French and Indian War. Click on this image to the left to see another view. The former site of Fort Duquesne is to the right of the fountain which is located right where the two rivers meet.

Click here to the website of the Fort Pitt Museum there.

Chapter 11: The War that Started it All

 

Here, on the right, is the original “Join or Die” political cartoon, which appeared in the May 9, 1754, Pennsylvania Gazette.

If your third graders  retain the fact that “Join or Die” political cartoon came out during the French and Indian War and not the Revolutionary War, they will know more than most adults.

Here, on the left, is the painting that appears on page 71.

 

 

 

Chapter 12: Proclamation on the Frontier

 

Chapter 12 is a lot for third graders to understand and absorb.

Click here for a TN History for Kids virtual tour of Fort Loudon.

And click here for amusing video starring “History Bill” that also covers a lot of it.

 

 

 

Chapter 13: Debts and Threats

 

Since students today may not know what it means to “stamp”something, I recommend teachers make certain that they gaze carefully at the photo on page 78, shown on the right.

On the left is the image on page 80.

Also, the painting on page 83 shows a man who has been tarred and feathered. This may seem funny to your students.

Please emphasize that tarring and feathering was a matter of torture, carried about by mobs. You might consider showing your students this short clipping from the HBO miniseries John Adams. However, please preview it first. Some students might find it too disturbing.

 

 

Sidebar: Revolution’s First Casualty

 

In April 2024 I visited the Granary Burial Ground in Boston.

It’s amazing place because so many people from early U.S. history are buried there (John Hancock, for instance) in a cramped, beautiful cemetery — completely surrounded by tall buildings.

It’s important to emphasize that the Boston Massacre was made famous in newspaper articles and made even more famous as Americans taught their history in the 1800s.

It’s interesting to note that one of the key events that led to the American Revolution involved the death of five people. Other events dubbed “massacres” have much higher death tolls. (In fact, 46 Black people died in the Memphis Massacre of 1866. But most people have never heard of the Memphis Massacre of 1866, and it isn’t even in the social studies standards.).