About Investigating History for Grades 3 and 4
Throughout the pilot of the Grades 3 and 4 materials in 2024-25, DESE received valuable feedback from teachers, administrators, and students about how to make the Investigating History curriculum for these grade levels as strong as possible. In order to provide time to incorporate this feedback, the formal release of the Grades 3 and 4 Investigating History curriculum is scheduled for Summer 2026, in time for the 2026-27 school year.
This full pilot version of the curriculum is being made available as-is. While this version of the curriculum will not yet reflect some important changes that will be in place before the formal release, this will allow educators to start familiarizing themselves with the instructional approach, try out lessons or clusters in their classroom, and begin planning for 2026-27 implementation.
Please note that these pilot materials have not yet undergone important revisions planned for 2025-26. These revisions include:
Building in robust supports for multilingual learners
Updating materials, maps, and sources to maximize grade-level appropriateness and usability
Strengthening the consistency of routines and instructional strategies across all units and grade levels
Ensuring that skills and content flow coherently into the Grades 5, 6, and 7 materials
Given the importance of these revisions, DESE strongly recommends that schools who are not part of the 2024-25 pilot do not try to implement the full curriculum for the first time in the 2025-26 school year.
Grade 3: Massachusetts, Home to Many Different People (download scope and sequence)
Unit 1: Indigenous Peoples and Places in the Northeast
Unit 2: Indigenous Communities, European Colonizers, and the Plymouth Colony
Unit 3: Indigenous Peoples, Puritans, and West Africans: The Changing Landscape of Massachusetts
Unit 4: Massachusetts and the American Revolution
Unit 5: The People and Governments of Massachusetts, Past and Present
Grade 4: North American History, Geography, and Peoples (download scope and sequence)
Unit 1: North American Geography
Unit 2: Ancient American Civilizations
Unit 3: European Exploration of North America
Unit 4: Impacts of U.S. Expansion
Unit 5: Regions of the United States