Lesson One:

Explorer Research

Lesson Two:

Creating Individual Timelines

Lesson Three:

Explorer Poster and Class Timeline

Lesson Four:

The World at the Time

Unit Overview: The Age of Exploration: A Class Timeline is an interdisciplinary unit that introduces students to the age of exploration and discovery. Students use the Internet to research expeditions and their leaders that led to the exploration of the New World and the colonization of North America. The students use an online timeline generator to create their own explorer timeline, and then work in groups to make posters that are displayed on a classroom timeline. The unit builds knowledge and understanding of the world during this period as the students research other events and discoveries in the areas of literature, art, music, science, politics and religion.

Timeline: This unit may take anywhere from two to three weeks depending on the availability of the computers and the amount of class time the instructor is willing to spare.

Standards: California State Standards Addressed:
  1. Fifth Grade Social Studies: 5.2 Students trace the routes of early explorers and describe the early explorations of the Americas.
    1. Describe the entrepreneurial characteristics of early explorers (e.g., Christopher Columbus, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado) and the technological developments that made sea exploration by latitude and longitude possible (e.g., compass, sextant, astrolabe, seaworthy ships, chronometers, gunpowder).
      2. Explain the aims, obstacles, and accomplishments of the explorers, sponsors, and leaders of key European expeditions and the reasons Europeans chose to explore and colonize the world (e.g., the Spanish Reconquista, the Protestant Reformation, the Counter Reformation).
      3. Trace the routes of the major land explorers of the United States, the distances traveled by explorers, and the Atlantic trade routes that linked Africa, the West Indies, the British colonies, and Europe.
      4. Locate on maps of North and South America land claimed by Spain, France, England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Russia.
  2. Fifth Grade Language Arts:
    1. 2.0 Reading Comprehension (Focus on Informational Materials) Structural Features of Informational Materials
      2.1 Understand how text features (e.g., format, graphics, sequence, diagrams, illustrations, charts, maps) make information accessible and usable.
      2.2 Analyze text that is organized in sequential or chronological order.
    1. Writing
      1. Research and Technology
        1.3 Use organizational features of printed text (e.g., citations, end notes, bibliographic references) to locate relevant information.
        1.4 Create simple documents by using electronic media and employing organizational features (e.g., passwords, entry and pull-down menus, word searches, the thesaurus, spell checks)