Westward Expansion - Complete Unit with Teaching Power Point

Unleash the power of history in your classroom with this comprehensive Westward Expansion unit! Journey into the past with captivating lessons and hands-on activities. Equip your students with a deeper understanding of America's movement west as they explore pioneers, Lewis & Clark, The Gold Rush, the Oregon Trail, and much, much more!

This complete Westward Expansion resource has everything you need to teach a fun and highly engaging unit about the Westward movement. Centered around a 10-lesson teaching PowerPoint with stunning photos from the time period, the unit includes:

• 15 days of detailed lesson plans
• 10-lesson teaching PowerPoint
• Westward Expansion assessments and quizzes
• 12 short reading comprehension and foundational skills mini lessons
• related literacy-based Westward Expansion centers for each week
• task cards
• vocabulary work
• reading passages with target skills embedded, plus small group options

Posters of key figures and events during the time period create a timeline display that is added to after each lesson. Easily integrate writing and research with think and write journal prompts and research templates with planning and publishing pages for 10 different topics related to the westward movement.

The unit also includes a response journal booklet with comprehension questions and target vocabulary for each of the 10 lessons. I’ve even included a Westward Expansion group project.

This resource can be adapted to teach a 2 or 3-week unit.

Address reading, writing, and language arts skills in each week’s lessons with social studies content. Work with nonfiction text features as your students read informational books about westward expansion (book list included) and make the Follow the Text Features Trail craft and bulletin board.

Plan your small groups around the skill-embedded reading passages, plus word work and grammar lessons with related practice activities.

Use the maps and graphic organizers in whole group or small to engage students in thinking critically about the cause-and-effect relationships between these historical events and key figures in American history.

Target speaking and listening standards through class discussions with the Think About It slides with discussion questions for each lesson in the Teaching PowerPoint. Students respond in writing to each of the lessons with the comprehension response journal.

Easily teach the skill lessons with 15 colorful lesson visuals and focus posters that can be printed or projected.

Include hands-on grammar practice with the bonus Gold Rush Grammar and Writing Craft. With 3 skills to choose from, students use westward expansion topics to focus on nouns/pronouns, facts/opinions, and possessive nouns/contractions while also adding an optional writing piece.

This is a very large unit. The download is a zip file with 4 separate resources that make up the unit.

The included unit pacing guide with very detailed lesson plans and teacher’s notes, plus standards alignment pages save you precious planning time as you teach an effective, organized, and highly engaging unit! My class LOVES this unit and I know yours will too!

Included in the unit:

Pacing & Planning Guide with resources at a glance to simplify planning.

Detailed 15-Day Lesson Plan with teacher’s notes, objectives, materials, and procedures. Easily customized to be taught as a 2 or 3-week unit.

10 Lesson Teaching PowerPoint

A 42-slide PowerPoint presentation with 10 high-interest lessons using real photographs and maps with comprehension questions and vocabulary focus for each lesson.

Lesson 1: What Was Westward Expansion?

Lesson 2: The Louisiana Purchase

Lesson 3: The Lewis & Clark Expedition

Lesson 4: The Oregon Trail

Lesson 5: The Erie Canal

Lesson 6: The Invention of the Steamboat

Lesson 7: The Pony Express

Lesson 8: The Invention of the Telegraph

Lesson 9: The Gold Rush

Lesson 10: The Transcontinental Railroad

Additional Components

Lesson Response Journal- Comprehension questions with key vocabulary for each lesson. Students answer text-based questions, form opinions, understand cause & effect relationships, and make inferences and judgments.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary lesson visuals (projectable and printable) in color and blackline

Large vocabulary/definition cards for display in color and blackline

Covered Wagon Vocabulary Craft Booklet

Lesson Support Materials

2 Multi-Paragraph Reading Passages with comprehension questions and target skills embedded

9 Timeline Posters with display header

6 Projectable Graphic Organizers in color with blackline student versions

2 Projectable Maps in color with blackline student versions to label the Louisiana Territory and the Oregon Trail

Assessments

2 Quizzes

Skill Checks

Unit Assessment

Skill Based Mini-Lessons

Each skill lesson includes a focus poster, activity pages, a quick check quiz, and related literacy center games, task cards, or crafts in color and blackline versions

• Cause & Effect
• Fact & Opinion
• Main Idea and Details
• Suffixes –sion and –sure
• Commas in Dates
• Commas in a Series

Additional Literacy Centers

• Inventions: Transportation & Communication Spinner Game
• Compare and Describe Flap Books –Transportation and communication inventions
• Vocabulary Match Game
• Break the Morse Code Game
• Build-A-Word with –sion and –sure
• Commas in a Series Task Cards
• Commas in Dates Task Cards

Writing Integration

• Research planning and publishing pages for 13 topics related to westward expansion
• Weekly Think-About-It journal prompts

Please view the PREVIEW to see all of the unit components and resources.

This resource will download in a zip file with 4 individual files

Happy teaching!

Linda Kamp

Around the Kampfire