13 Colonies Lesson Plan
Lesson Template
Desired Results
Relevant Minnesota or Nat'l Content
Standards:
MN Standard: Strand I, Substrand B - The
student will demonstrate knowledge of the
colonies and the factors that shaped North
America.
Learning Objective: Key Understanding(s)
you intend students to obtain:
1. The student will demonstrate knowledge
of the colonies and the factors that shaped
colonial North America.
MNBOT Standard: 3i - How historical events
have been influenced by, and have influenced,
physical and human geographic factors in local,
regional, national, and global settings.
Assessment Evidence
What do you want your students to know?
What do you want students to be able to do?
1. Similarities and differences between
colonial economies, politics, and ways of
life.
2. Physical and human characteristics of
national colonial regions.
Group Accountability (Formative)
1. Compare and contrast life within the
colonies and their geographical areas,
including New England, Mid-Atlantic, and
Southern colonies, and analyze their
impact.
2. Utilize their textbooks to research a
particular region in order to define the
important political, cultural, and economic
characteristics of colonies within that
region.
Individual Accountability (Summative)
How will you check to see whether your class How will you check to see if individuals have
has met your learning objectives?
acquired the knowledge/skills you expected
them to learn?
1. Jigsaw activity - each group will be helping
one another fill out their matrices. There
will be 3 total groups, and 3-4 students per
group will become the "experts" on one
colony from each region (New England,
1. Students will fill out a graphic organizer
that requires them to detail specific
information, such as "region," "religion,"
"original purpose for colony," "economics,"
Middle Colonies, Southern Colonies). The
experts will report back to their groups after
about twenty minutes of research. After
this, they will answer the questions: What
made the colonies you focused on
similar? What made them different?
and a variety of others categories. By
researching in the textbook and filling in
this matrix, they should gain a strong
understanding of the motivations for
beginning these colonies, as well as how
their early activities and cultures formed
the foundations for what we know them as
today.
2. For homework, students will create a
colony of their own. They will utilize the
matrices that they filled out in class to
select the aspects of colonial life their
colony will exhibit, describing each in
detail. They will document who lives there
and why. Also, they will describe which
region their colony would best fit in, and
why. Finally, they will create a map of their
colony, complete with the locations of
resources, important towns (complete with
rationale for the towns' locations) and
notable geographic characteristics.
Learning Plan
What key vocabulary/language will students How will you teach this key vocabulary to
need to know to meet the learning objective? enable students to meet the learning
objective?
Region, Founder, Proprietary, Royal, Toleration,
Plantation, Slavery
Students will encounter the majority of this
vocabulary while filling out their graphic
organizers, which will require them to analyze
and make connections between the vocabulary
and what is being studied.
What is the Essential/Guiding Question(s) for How will you differentiate for all the
this Lesson? (It should correlate to your
learners (ELL, Sp. Ed., poverty, gifted, etc.)
learning objective.)
in your class?
What kinds of things united the colonies? What Differentiation Options: questions, stems,
kinds of things made them different?
sentence frames, strategies, etc.
1. There are no ELL students in class, but the
introductory question should help
students who struggle with reading gain a
sense of background knowledge before
they delve into the material.
2. The group activity will be especially
effective for interpersonal learners, but
also for mastery learners, as it requires
them to systematically acquire and record
information.
3. The homework assignment will be helpful
for linguistic, intrapersonal, and
naturalistic learners because it allows
them to synthesize what they have
learned in coming up with an original idea
in describing their colony.
Materials/Resources Required:
1. Textbooks
2. Colonial matrix
SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES
Method/Strategy
Time Allotment
(What will you do? What do you expect students to do? Include set induction
and closing.)
Students answer the question: You have learned that the original colonists
left their homes in Europe largely because of intolerance. What is
intolerance, and how is it prevalent still today?
5 minutes
Assign jigsaw groups, move into groups
5 minutes
"Expert" groups fill out sections for their specific regions
20 min.
Full group discussion, fill out rest of matrix
20 min.
1 min.
Discuss homework assignment