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Overview:
Where does your family live? Why have you (or your family) chosen to live in that place? Some of the reasons could be practical, such as job opportunities or available land. Some could be personal, such as family connections, preferred climate, cultural activities, or population density. Natural disasters, political persecution, and warfare have caused many families to resettle. This lesson uses children's literature and maps to explore reasons for past and present settlement.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, social studies, history, language arts
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 12: "The processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement"
Time:
Three to five hours
Materials Required:
- Children's literature—Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series or My First Little House series
- Drawing materials
- Wall map of the United States
- Blank Xpeditions outline maps of the United States, one for each student
- Physical and political maps of the midwestern United States
Objectives:
Students will
- give various reasons people in the past or present have chosen to settle and live in different regions of the United States; and
- complete a map that traces a migration route of a pioneer family by using information from children's literature—or from historical records.
Geographic Skills:
Answering Geographic Questions
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Introduce the words "settle," "settlement," and "settler." Ask students to use these words in a sentence. (Examples: "When I grow up, my family will settle out in the country." "On our field trip, we visited the settlement at Jamestown." "My great-grandfather was a pioneer settler and rode in a covered wagon.")
Ask your students to read (individually, or aloud in class) one or more of the following books by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House on the Prairie, Little House in the Big Woods, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Winter Days in the Big Woods, Going West. These classic books describe and illustrate the idea of settlement.
Development:
Depending on your students' age and level of understanding, preface the lesson with some history of western settlement in the United States. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave settlers free ownership of 160 acres (65 hectares) of land if they farmed it for five consecutive years. This was part of a politically charged ambition to relocate Native Americans and settle the West at the time of the Civil War.
Begin the lesson with a discussion about the Ingalls family and its migrations—the places they settled, the environments, available resources, types of lodging, positives or negatives for each place of settlement. Make a list on the blackboard or an overhead transparency to summarize information from the classroom discussion.
Using their outline maps of the United States, help students trace a route taken by the Ingalls family on one of its resettlement journeys. For younger students, this could be a whole-class activity with the teacher reading the directions for the route aloud. Older students could work individually or in pairs, reading the route directions from one of the books and drawing the trail. Provide physical and political maps to aid their efforts. Here's a sample route:
Resettlement Route of the Ingalls Family
(from information contained in Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder)
Begin in Wisconsin, just north of the town of Pepin. Go southwest to Lake Pepin and cross the Mississippi River into Minnesota. Continue southwest and cross into Iowa. You will go almost through the center of the state on your continuing travels to the southwest. Cross into Missouri and head toward the Missouri River. You should cross the Missouri River into Kansas at a point north of Kansas City and south of Nebraska. Continue traveling south through Kansas. You are nearing the end of your journey! Your final destination is west of the Verdigris River and south of Independence, Kansas. This was called Indian Territory, and is now the state of Oklahoma.
Closing:
Once students have completed their route maps, begin a discussion about the paths the Ingalls family followed. What were the reasons they left one home for another? (They were searching for land to homestead. This was during the late 1800s when the West was opening, and the land rush was on.) What physical or geographical boundaries did they encounter? Were their travels dangerous? Did they pass many towns along the way? Why not? How did the family adapt to their new place of settlement? (They lived by themselves and were generally self-sufficient, but made occasional trips to town for items they could not make themselves.) What physical features might have influenced settlement in particular spots (e.g., running water or trees for building a house)?
Suggested Student Assessment:
Share settlement histories, such as diaries of real pioneers from the United States and elsewhere, with your class. Allow them to pick favorites, then map and describe the routes traveled by the pioneers.
Extending the Lesson:
- Give each student a questionnaire to be completed by his or her family. Questions should pertain to reasons for settling in their present hometown. Answers should be direct "yes" or "no" responses. Upon completing and returning the questionnaire, students could create a class bar graph showing reasons for settlement.
- Students could write another chapter to one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, perhaps an interesting aspect of a settler's life. What hardship or adventure might that settler experience? Would he or she be staying put or resettling?
Kay McGough of St. Mary's School in Edgerton, Ohio, contributed classroom ideas for Standard 12.
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