Interested in testing a fourth-grade Montana history unit?

As regular readers know, we are slowly working to put together a comprehensive fourth grade Montana history curriculum. Both the first unit (Montana Today: A Geographic Study) and the second unit (Montana's First Peoples) are available to download from our website.

I'm close to finished with a draft of the third unit (Coming to Montana) and am looking for teachers to test it with their students. (Still to come is a unit that will talk about homesteading, allotment, boarding schools, and twentieth-century immigration).

Coming to Montana investigates some of the push-pull factors that brought people to the state: European settlement in the east that pushed tribes westward, the fur trade and Montana's mineral wealth and rich grasslands. The unit is broken into 7 parts:

• Part 1: Should I Stay or Should I Go? (1-2 days)
• Part 2: Montana's First Peoples (1-2 days)
• Part 3: The Next Big Pull Factor: Precious Metals (contains 4 separate lessons, 5-6 days to do all 4)
• Part 4: Ranching (contains two separate lessons, 4 days to do both)
• Part 5: Logging (2 days)
• Part 6: the Shrinking Reservation (1-2 days)
• Part 7: Wrap-up (1 day, but you need to have done at least a few of the other lessons for this)

Coming to Montana incorporates some previously published lesson plans:

• "Should I Stay or Should I Go" and "No Smoking: A History Mystery," Lessons 3 and from the Coming to Montana: Immigrants from around the World footlocker
• Who Are the Métis?
• a streamlined version of "The Rest of the Story" (from Montana's Charlie Russell)
• "What Would You Bring?" Emigrant Families on Montana's Gold Rush Frontier, and
• "Mining Muffin Reclamation" (from the Gold, Silver, and Coal Oh My! footlocker)

But it also has material created specifically for this unit, including

• a guided research project on life for cowboys on the ranching frontier using excerpts from Teddy Blue Abbott's reminiscence, We Pointed Them North and historical photographs from our collection;
• An examination of census information to discover who lived in logging camps; 
• a math-based lesson on the Indian land loss; and
• a card-game lesson on cause and effect.

Are you interested in trying this unit out with your fourth-grade class and providing feedback? I'm should be able to have material to you by the end of February. The entire unit should take 15-20 days but I'd be happy to test individual pieces as well.

Email me if you are interested, and I'll send you more information.