Standards: SS.H.9-12.7 analyze how historical, cultural, social, political, ideological, and economic contexts shape people's perspectives; SS.H.9-12.10 analyze perspectives of American Indians in US history; SS.H.9-12.5 explain events in relation to both their intended and unintended consequences, including governmental policies impacting American Indians 

Proficiencies: I can identify key arguments and ideas in reading, articulate those arguments and ideas, and formulate my own arguments about them. 

I can properly form a thesis statement and connect it to my topic sentences.  

I can articulate through discussion and writing how events on the Plains influenced the U.S.A’s westward expansion, and how that impacted the American Indians living in there.   

Big Ideas/Understandings: 

Understanding the American Colonial mission. The tactics employed, and why those tactics are employed.

Understanding the U.S. policy shift from Indian-Removal to Indian-Reservations.

Understanding the U.S. mission to assimilate American-Indians through the destruction of their cultures. 

Essay Prompt: "What was the impact of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876) upon Euro-American and Plains-Indians?" 

Grade: 10th.

Week 1 All About The Battles: May 13th-17th

• Day 1 (Early Release): Lecture and discussion on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Homework is reading on Sand Creek documents. 

• Day 2: Open-book student focused activity on Sand Creek Massacre. Homework is document-analysis on the Fetterman Fight; 1 Primary Source document, 1 Secondary Source document. 

• Day 3:  Student Led-Lectures. Break them into 2 groups focusing on each document from last night's homework. They will be tasked with identifying the speaker, the intended audience, bias, and the key points of the documents. They will then present this to the other group. 

• Day 4: Quick Lecture and Activity on connecting thesis statements to topic sentences. Essay work day focused on finding sources for their essay. No homework for Friday.  

• Day 5: Lecture on The Battle of the Big Hole and Nez Pierce War; as well as the Vigilantes. No homework for the weekend.

Week 2 The Fallout and the Buffalo: May 20th-24th

• Day 1 (Early Release): Lecture on the extermination of the Buffalo. DBQ activity on Zoologist document. Homework is book-reading on the fallout of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. 

• Day 2:  Teacher-led board activity on homework reading (open-book). They will articulate the key ideas of the reading, and I shall write them down on the board. Activity will end when I am satisfied. Then lecture on the Reservations. No homework. 

• Day 3: Working on connecting to last week. Bellringer will be watching the imbedded video on Deer Medicine Rocks, and discussing it after. Then there will be a lecture on Chicago style citations; class will break into groups of 3 to practice Chicago style citations with a document based activity. Homework will be book reading on the Gold-Rush.

• Day 4: Introducing the topic of next week, there will be a class discussion on the reading leading into a lecture on Butte. The importance of the mining, and the Labor antagonisms inside it. Essay draft due Friday.

• Day 5: Lecture on the Massacre at Wounded Knee. DBQ activity on documents surrounding Wounded Knee. Homework is document-reading about the Boarding Schools.

Week 3 Erasing Culture and Growing Settlements: May 27th-31st

• Day 1 (Holiday): Enjoy the holiday.

• Day 2: Student-led board activity on Boarding Schools (no pun intended). They will have to identify the purpose, actions, and impacts of the boarding schools upon the board. It will be an open-been classwide activity. Homework reading on the Turner Thesis. 

• Day 3: Open book student led activity on the Turner Thesis. Discussion on the importance of the Frontier to American society, and its implications for American-Indian society. Then a brief lecture on historiography in relation to Western-History and the Turner Thesis. No homework.

• Day 4: Work day! Students will have one final day in class to work on their essays, and ask any questions about it. They should have all the tools in their box to handle this. Essay due the next day.

• Day 5: Essay due! Then I will begin shifting the focus to a new unit on Labor-History. Lecture again on Butte: the Speculator Mine Disaster, I-W-W, and the lynching of Frank Little. No homework for the weekend.

Standards: SS.H.9-12.7 and SS.H.9-12.5 

1st Thing Icebreaker: Name, where they are from. 

2nd thing Pre-assessment: Ask them what they know about the extinction of the Buffalo, and what they know about U.S. Military/Government involvement in the extinction of the Buffalo.  

3rd thing Lecture: Present the brief lecture on the general information regarding Buffalo extermination. 

4th thing Assessment/Activity: We are going to work together to analyze a primary documents with me modeling in part the sequence if necessary.  Identifying the author, their point of view, potential bias, and so on before its read, and then using that to inform our reading and question what we’re being told. We’ll then do the same thing for a secondary source document from the Atlantic on the killing of the Buffalo.  

Standard(s): SS.H.9-12.7 

1st Icebreaker: Make sure I remember all their names, and get them to tell me about what they are gonna do this weekend. 

2nd  Pre-assessment/Bellringer: I want to see what they know about the idea that white-Americans had about the West. The Frontier thesis and American Exceptionalism. I'm going to be asking them outright if they’ve heard of those two ideas. I’ll then break down the terms into their base ideas, and see what their background understanding of that is. 

3rd Scaffolding/Modelling: I noticed that they were having a bit of a hard time, though weren’t unable, to identify key points and arguments in the document they were working with. Before tackling something like the Turner Thesis I want to make sure they understand what a thesis is, and break that down for them. This will involve me first modelling a thesis, and some key points. We’re then gonna think of how we can summarize other people’s theses and I will let them know that they’re going to be making their own, short argument based on the article. How is, or isn’t, Turner’s Thesis applicable to American politics today? 

4th The Meat and Potatoes: After all of this we’re going to dip into the Turner Thesis. This will largely be like my last lesson where we broke down the ideas of a Zoologist of that time, and what was implied and said in that. I’ll split them into 3 parts of the reading. I’ll prompt them towards the key ideas in those readings. Part 1, what does the frontier mean to America? Part 2 What did the frontier do for America? Part 3 What does the loss of the frontier bring to America?  I’m hoping to get some good discussion about what his ideas imply, purposefully or unintentionally. As well as create a better understanding of American-Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny at that time.

Sequence of Instruction Lesson 3: 

Overview: My intention here is to meaningfully connect content standard SS.H.9-12.10, as I haven’t done enough in my opinion to connect American-Indian perspectives yet. The lesson will also connect the other two standards of the unit, SS.H.9-12.7 and SS.H.9-12.5. To do this I’m going to use Lone Dog’s winter count which I’ll use to start conversation on these various content area standards. Particularly how American-Indians viewed westward expansion.  

1st Icebreaker: Im going to ask them about their weekend; they mentioned they usually watch movies after going to Church (If they go) and Im curious to know what movies they watched. 

2nd Pre-Assessment: This will be a simple pre-assessment. I’ll ask them if they know about how the Dakota-Sioux kept history to see if they know about the oral tradition as well as the winter count. Depending on their level of knowledge, I’ll help establish the background information about both subjects to provide better context for the analysis of the winter-count and discussion. 

3rd Laying the Foundation: After the pre-assessment I’ll explain the activity to them. Namely that we’re going to look at the winter-count and suspend our knowledge for a moment to pick out what we see, what we think, and what we wonder about all aspects of the winter-count. 

4th Meat and Potatoes: We’ll do the activity discussed in step 3. I’m going to have Trevor be the stenographer for this activity; taking note of the different observations and wonders that the group comes up with. After identifying these things I’ll take out the resources that tell us what the various symbols mean, and when they occurred. This will establish two key points of discussion: How the Dakota-Sioux recorded and passed-on information and history in comparison to Euro-American society, and the way that the Dakota-Sioux viewed the westward expansion and how it affected them.