Reading Comprehension | Writing | Westward Expansion | The Oregon Trail | California Gold Rush | Transcontinental Railroad | Pacific Railroad Act | Pioneer Life | Covered Wagons | Wagon Trains | Log Cabins | Boomtowns | The Pony Express | Special Education. Daily Lessons to teach American History while also improving essential reading and writing skills!

Take students on a journey... back in time to the early 1800's. The era of westward expansion, pioneers, and traveling by covered wagons... But things were about to change... The first Transcontinental Railroad was under construction and Gold had just been discovered in California! And the southern states didn't want to be a part of the United States any longer... This exciting time is when America's size grew dramatically- as Americans migrated across the U.S. and headed westward.

This wild time, is seen by many as a pivotal moment in American history...

This slice from our Daily American History series covers the important events of the Cold War era. These dramatic and dangerous events were instrumental in the continuing development of our nation. See product preview to see more sample pages!

EASY-TO-READ LESSONS:

Tackle social studies topics while simultaneously focusing on improving essential reading and writing skills. To aid comprehension, font sizes are larger, and a words-to-know section is included to help students get familiar with any challenging vocabulary that may be found in a story. Lessons use short, easy-to-read sentences, a lower 4th-5th grade reading level, simple vocabulary, and repetition/review.

DAILY MINI-LESSONS:

Each three-part lesson is divided into small, manageable, daily mini-lessons. Skill-based reading and writing exercises follow each mini-lesson and are designed to help students understand what they have read and retain key historical information. To encourage students to read and then re-read the text, there is a “locating the information” activity at the bottom of each story page. This simple exercise helps to reinforce key facts from the story.

CAPTIVATING ILLUSTRATIONS:

Keep students engaged in their learning with the historical illustrations and photos that are sprinkled throughout the lessons. This strong picture-text correspondence has been proven to improve overall comprehension and reading enjoyment.

TEACHING GUIDE & ENRICHMENT IDEAS:

To help you and your students get the most out of these lessons, an in-depth teacher guide, important people and places lists, words-to-know lists, enrichment ideas, and answer key are also included. Enrichment Ideas offer suggestions for discussion, research, and higher level comprehension questions.

READABILITY:

A specific challenge for this book was being true to history while simplifying the content. An effort was made to create stories that were rich with important historical information, yet on a level that would be understood by those students reading below grade level. To accomplish this, short sentences, simple explanations, and plenty of repetition were used whenever possible.

Reading Level: 4.0 - 5.5

Interest Level: 4 - 12

Page Count: 44