You have just hit the lesson plan jackpot! This isn't just a instructional activity, it's a ten-day unit covering westward expansion, pioneer life, and the Oregon Trail. Activities include baking, model building, role-play, newspaper...

Students investigate the hardships related to pioneer life and the Wagon Train. They listen to an excerpt from the book "Little House on the Prairie," and discuss the hardships faced by pioneers travelling west. In small groups...

Learners assume the personality of a pioneer on a wagon train and create daily journals.  In this journal writing lesson, students read excerpts from The Way West:  Journal of a Pioneer Woman.  Learners use their...

Students use educational software to examine the hardships and problem solving skills needed by the pioneers as they endured frontier life. They work as teams while using the game simulation. They work a number of project while not on...

Students practice active listening skills.  In this literacy and U.S. history instructional activity, students predict the hardships pioneers using the Mormon Trail might have faced. Students view the movie "Children of the Wagon...

Students explore westward movement through eyes of doll belonging to Patty Reed, member of Donner Party. They write journal entries from points of view of characters in book, Patty Reed's Doll, participate in Pack the Wagon game, and...

Students listen to the song, The Wheels on the Bus. Instead of a bus, students attempt to sing the song using a different mode of transportation.

Reading about history is nothing like experiencing it firsthand. Encourage your eighth graders to do the next best thing with a historical narrative prompt, in which they describe the experience of a first-time traveler on the...

Designed for Hard Gold, a novel in Avi's I Witness series, this teaching guide includes a summary of the story and information about the writer as well as chapter-by-chapter vocabulary lists, text-based reading questions,...

For this comprehension worksheet, students read chapter 10 of the book Twister on Tuesday and complete 5 multiple choice questions. Answers are provided.

If you build it they can come. After reading a short article about the impact of western expansion, middle schoolers cite evidence from the article to explain how this expansion forced changes in transportation.

Get your middle schoolers up to scratch with analogies using this worksheet. Pupils complete 10 analogies by determining the associations between the words and using the provided bridge sentences.

Young scholars write a persuasive letter home defending their decision either to settle in Utah and farm the land, or to go on to California to seek gold. They analyze a problem, make a decision, and write a letter defending their choice.

In this online interactive reading comprehension instructional activity, high schoolers respond to 14 multiple choice questions about Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. Students may submit their answers to be scored.

Fifth graders examine the landmarks along the Pioneer Trail. They discover these landmarks were used as guides. They research the Pioneer Trail and present to the class.

Students decide whether the Reenactment Trek of 1997 parallels the attitudes and challenges of the 1847 Trek.

Pupils, through a literature based assignment, explore basic modes of transportation and examine how different things move at different speeds.

Students listen to the song, The Wheels on the Bus. They are shown the book, This is the Way We Go to School. Afterward, they learn the phonetic principle of rhyming words.

Students listen to the song, The Wheels on the Bus. They attempt to sing the song again, but change it for a tractor. They watch the book, A Visit With Grandma, through a projector, LCD panel, or big screen television and develop their...

Students explore transportation and transportation related jobs as they improve their vocabulary.

Students continue to study rhyming words. They use words and illustrations to help develop their vocabulary.

Young scholars explore how to use maps for travel. In this map skills lesson plan, students read the text, With Love from Gran and discuss the places the character traveled. Young scholars list the names of each city and country on chart...

In this revisions worksheet, students fill in blanks in sentences, 15 total, with "vivid and precise" word. Students are instructed that they may use a thesaurus. 

In this spelling list worksheet, students practice spelling words that are sight words, r controlled vowels, and vocabulary. Students practice spelling 21 words total.