Lesson Plan - Discovering North Carolina: A Colonial Map WebQuest

A Lesson Plan for Grade 8 Social Studies

By Jennifer Job, School of Education, UNC-Chapel Hill

Objectives:
Students will identify the geographic aspects that influenced exploration and settlement. Students will connect narrative with geographic locations for topics including discovery, Native Americans, and politics.

This lesson plan is available as a formatted worksheet, which can be printed and distributed. Download the worksheet by clicking the title: discovering_nc_k12.pdf

Detail from A new discription of Carolina by the order of the Lords Proprietors, ca. 1671.

Time Required: One class period.

Materials:

  • Computer access (either individual or teams of two)
  • WebQuest Sheet (.pdf)

Instruction:
This lesson is intended to follow introductory instruction on Colonial North Carolina. Students should follow instructions on the handout (.pdf); the instructor should emphasize the need for students to note which Web sites their material comes from. The teacher also needs to designate the length of the story at the end of the Web quest.

Assessment:
Teachers may grade the WebQuests at their own discretion.

North Carolina Curriculum Alignment

  • 1.01: Assess the impact of geography on the settlement and developing economy of the Carolina colony.
  • 1.02: Identify and describe American Indians who inhabited the regions that became Carolina and assess their impact on the colony.
  • 1.03: Compare and contrast the relative importance of differing economic, geographic, religious, and political motives for European exploration.
  • 1.06: Identify geographic and political reasons for the creation of a distinct North Carolina colony and evaluate the effects on the government and economics of the colony.