Texas History: A Literature Approach for Intermediate Grades was written for grades four through six, but options are included to make it challenging enough for seventh grade. That means the course can be used to meet Texas requirements for either fourth grade or seventh grade.
Course Components
The course consists of the three resources published by Beautiful Feet Books: the course guide titled Texas History: A Literature Approach for Intermediate Grades, the Texas Notebook, and the Texas Map. The 145-page guide is printed in full color and is not consumable. The Texas Notebook has pages for lessons with pre-printed vocabulary words to define, maps to label, and space to record or write information (as directed in the guide). Students can look up definitions in the glossary at the back of the guide. The large, foldable Texas Map is printed on cardstock, and students write and draw on it throughout the course.
In addition, you need 15 literary works, which you can purchase (available from Beautiful Feet Books) or borrow from the library. Some of the literary works are Texas History for Kids: Lone Star Lives and Legends, The Story of Texas: A History Picture Book, The Indians Who Lived in Texas, Susanna of the Alamo: A True Story, and All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom. The first two books serve as spine books throughout the course, so you probably want to own them. The literary works are secular and include significant multicultural coverage.
Internet links used along with the course guide are accessed through a QR code on page 3. (A URL is also provided.) Internet links take students to articles, directions for projects, videos, images, and more.
Also on the publisher’s webpage for this book is the downloadable Texas History Resource Packet with a suggested schedule, blank and labeled Texas maps, activity supply list, the Scale-Up Guide (suggestions for making this a seventh-grade course), field trip suggestions, a comprehensive list of the Rabbit Trails books, and several recipes (also included in the guide).
How It Works
The course has 65 lessons arranged in six parts:
- Native Americans in Texas
- European Exploration and Settlement
- The Texas Revolution and the Republic of Texas
- Statehood and the Civil War
- The Cattle Drive Era
- The Twentieth Century and Beyond
To complete the course in one school year, students should work through about two lessons a week. Each lesson usually has three sections under the headings Read, Discuss, and Record. Lessons might also have sections headed Play and Explore. The Read section gives reading assignments, sometimes adding helpful comments. Discuss sections provide specific questions and topics for discussion. When answers are predictable, they are shown in parentheses after the questions. Record involves writing definitions or information in their Texas Notebook, completing mapwork, and sometimes coloring Notebook items like various Texas state flags. Play activities vary greatly. They might be arts and crafts, cooking, memorizing and performing a song, candle making, building a mission diorama, or some other creative activity. Some of them refer students to links for inspiration or directions. Explore sections offer students a chance to investigate topics further through independent research activities and the publisher’s internet links. Students will sometimes write about or draw their findings.
If parents or students want to learn more about specific topics, each of the guide’s six sections includes a page or more with descriptions of additional books under Rabbit Trails.
What Do Parents Need to Do?
Parents might read aloud some of the books since there are so many of them. Even if students are reading on their own, parents will find it helpful to be familiar enough with the books to respond to students’ answers to discussion questions.
Play activities often require resources that parents will need to gather, so checking the supply list in the resource packet and planning ahead are essential.
Student work in their Texas Notebook will need to be evaluated, but that should be easy.
There are no tests for this course since parents should be able to judge how well students understand what has been read from the discussions and Texas Notebook entries.
Adapting for Different Ages
Younger students might concentrate primarily on the Read, Discuss, Record, and Play sections. The two-page Scale-Up Guide recommends that seventh graders do all Explore activities and that parents turn some discussion and Explore activities into writing assignments. It also makes other specific recommendations for each part of the study, such as this one for Part 2: “Lesson 14 first introduces students to James and Jane Long (who will be revisited in Lesson 18). Students could research and report on the Long Expedition, an early attempt to take control of Texas away from Spain.” Fifth and sixth graders should also do some of the activities suggested in the Scale-Up Guide since the course does not require much writing.
Summary
Beautiful Feet Books has mastered the creation of literature-based courses that include hands-on activities and interesting books to provide better coverage of topics, like the history of Texas, than is found in a single textbook.
