🌎 4th grade Social Studies: how to help at home

What each unit covers

1. 🏞️First Peoples of Texas

   Ideas about how people first came to the Americas, the four cultural regions of American Indians in Texas, the ways of life of the Caddo, Karankawa, Lipan Apache, Jumano and Comanche, how the Caddo and Comanche governed themselves, and the three tribes in Texas today (Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Alabama-Coushatta and Kickapoo). Nations are described as living communities, with nothing sacred or ceremonial.

2. ⛵Explorers & Missions

   Why Europeans explored Texas, Álvarez de Pineda, Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado and La Salle, and when, where and why Spain built missions, presidios and towns. Told plainly: the missions harmed many American Indian people through disease, forced labor and the loss of land and culture.

3. 🌵Mexican Texas

   Texas in Mexico's War of Independence (the Battle of Medina), the empresarios Moses and Stephen F. Austin, Martín de León and Green DeWitt, how early settlers made a living, and Mexico's early government.

4. 🔔The Texas Revolution

   Causes, events and effects of the Texas Revolution: Gonzales, the Alamo, the Texas Declaration of Independence (signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos), the Runaway Scrape, Goliad and San Jacinto, with Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Seguín, Benavides, Ruiz, Santa Anna, Susanna Dickinson and Enrique Esparza.

5. ⭐Republic to Statehood

   The Republic of Texas: its constitution, presidents Houston, Lamar and Jones, José Antonio Navarro, debt, the Texas Rangers and relations with American Indian nations, then annexation in 1845 and the U.S.-Mexican War.

6. 🕊️Civil War & Reconstruction

   Texas's secession (its declaration of causes named slavery), the Civil War in Texas, Juneteenth in Galveston and Reconstruction. Told factually and neutrally.

7. 🐂Cattle, Rails & the Frontier

   Vaqueros and longhorns, the cattle drives and Charles Goodnight, Richard King and Lizzie Johnson, how railroads changed Texas towns and industries, and how the Red River War, frontier forts, railroads and the loss of the buffalo changed life for Plains nations.

8. 🛢️Oil, Wars & Inventors

   Spindletop and Pattillo Higgins, how oil and gas made Texas industrial and urban, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and World War II (Audie Murphy, Cleto Rodríguez, Bessie Coleman), and Texas inventors and scientists such as Gail Borden, Joseph Glidden, Michael DeBakey and Millie Hughes-Fulford.

9. 🗺️Regions of Texas

   The four physical regions of Texas (Mountains and Basins, Great Plains, North Central Plains, Coastal Plains), their landforms, climate, vegetation and work, and why people settled where they did.

10. 🧭Maps & the Land

    Compass roses, legends, scales and grids, the rivers and borders of Texas, and how and why Texans have adapted to and changed their environment (dams, irrigation, timber clearing, ship channels), with the good and bad effects.

11. 💵The Texas Economy

    How free enterprise works (supply, demand, profit and competition) and its benefits, needs and wants, how Texans earn a living in each region, and how transportation, communication, immigration and limited resources shaped the Texas economy.

12. 🏛️Government & Citizens

    The three branches of Texas government, the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution and Bill of Rights, voting and civic participation, leaders at each level, and Texans who modeled public service, such as Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards and Henry B. González.

13. 🤠Symbols & Celebrations

    The six flags over Texas, the Alamo and San Jacinto Monument, "Texas, Our Texas" and the Pledge to the Texas Flag, state symbols, Texas Independence Day and Juneteenth, cultural celebrations and Texas artists such as Lydia Mendoza, Chelo Silva and Julius Bledsoe.

14. ⏳Texas Through Time

    Ordering events in Texas history from the first explorers to the space age, plus primary and secondary sources, decades and centuries, cause and effect and points of view.