Lesson 5

Road vs. Railroad vs. Canal

“About 180, some people with big ideas decided that we needed a road that would go across the country – well, at least from the East Coast to the Mississippi, which seemed across the country to most Easterners then (A History of US, volume 4).”  (DOK 1) Can you imagine a land without roads (or with only small local roads)?  How would you send and receive goods?  That was the dilemma facing people in the 1800s.  I would share this information with my students, and at that point, ask them to tell discuss with a partner how they might answer this question (DOK 2).  They should listen to what their partner had to say and then share what their partner thought, with the class.  As a large group, we would then construct some ways to transport goods across large areas. (DOK 3) Hopefully they’ll come up with roads, railroads, and canals. On computer paper, the students would need to draw what they think we would need to build in order to transport these goods.  They should be using their ideas, classmates, and the large group’s ideas and these ideas should vary. (DOK 4)

After our ideas were put on paper, I would share with them information about roads (pages 112/113), the story of the Erica Canal from ‘The History of US,’ volume 4, pages 114/5, and the steam engine (railroads) on pages 118/9.

We will also be using our classroom map to locate the Erica Canal, the path of the National Road from Baltimore to St. Louis, and the map on pages 122/3 to show roads, rails/trails, and canals.

R6A251 Summarize the major points, processes, and/or events of a nonfiction text….

166A Listen critically and respond to others…. Respond with grade appropriate questions, ideas, information, or opinions.

Domains – 1 a-e, 2 a-e, 3 a-e, 4 a, f