Welcome back for another edition of Texas History Tuesday! This week's topic is the colonization of Texas. I am excited to share some of my resources as well as an incredible book that my students are begging for more of! That's not even exaggerating.
As with our other units we start with some background knowledge from the Colonization of Texas PowerPoint. My students just love these and find it helpful to take notes from there.
Colonization has a lot of background knowledge that comes along with it including manifest destiny, but students really need to know about the three significant empresarios that brought people to Texas. For this we use the Empresarios of Texas Fold-Up and Reflection Questions.
As I said, colonization has a lot of background knowledge which isn't always the most interesting thing for a nine year old. I am always looking for a different way to pass this knowledge onto my students without boring them to tears. Recently I came across the For the Love of Texas book series by Betsy and George Christian and they are a life saver!
I absolutely love them because they are information rich. They include tons of background information as well as academic vocabulary. My students love them because of the cartoon style of illustration and the humor.
The chapters are short and manageable. We tend to read one every day or so. They all have titles that hook students and make them want to read on. As we finish each chapter I tease them with the next one to get them thinking and make predictions about what we will read tomorrow.
My students cannot get enough of the comic illustrations that really make these points in history stick with them. Their absolute favorite part is the lists that are in many of the chapters. Each list gives a few accurate answers and then a silly one which has them rolling on the floor every time. For example, one list is "Three Ways a Little Human Being Can Kill a Really Big Buffalo." The title alone has my kids leaning in with glee, because they are waiting for it. I don't want to give away the humor, but I promise you won't regret checking it out for yourself.
Check back next week to see the projects that we will be working on for colonization!
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