The document provides guidance on key topics related to the colonial history of North America, including reasons for establishing colonies in New England and the South, economic activities like subsistence farming and plantations, challenges faced by the early Jamestown colony, the significance of the Mayflower Compact, and factors that influenced where colonists settled and how they lived. Students are prompted to consider related historical context around events, people, geography, economics, and the development of representative government.
2. Reasons for the Establishment of New
England Colonies like Plymouth, MA
Think about: Separatists, Pilgrims, Puritans.
What did they want?
3. Reasons for the establishment of
Southern colonies like Jamestown, VA
Think
about: Virginia Company, who went
to Jamestown.
What were they looking for?
4. Why people in New England practiced
only subsistence farming.
Think
about: New England geography
and climate.
Think about: What is subsistence farming.
5. Why people in the Southern
Colonies had plantations.
Think about what is grown on plantations.
Think about Southern climate and
geography.
6. Why Jamestown had
problems early on
Think about: What did people do when
they got off the boat?
Think about: John Smith.
“He who will not work, neither shall he
eat”
7. Why the founding of
Jamestown was significant
What was it the first of?
8. How the Appalachian
Mountains impacted colonial
life.
Thinkabout: Where are
these mountains?
What would they have
blocked settlers from
doing?
9. How the Mayflower Compact contributed to
the development of representative
government
Think about: What did it do for the
Pilgrims?
10. Why the Middle Colonies were
so tolerant
Thinkabout: who lived in the Middle
colonies.
What sorts of groups were there?
11. The definition of unalienable
rights
We may not be to this at the time you
start studying.
Unalienable rights are rights that can’t be
taken away from you.
Like John Locke’s natural rightsm
12. Why England started to explore the
world in the 15th and 16th centuries
Think about: 3 Gs
Think about: Who were England’s rivals?
13. Why the Southern colonies
depended on slave labor
Think about: What economic activity
required slave labor
Think about: Why didn’t they use Native
Americans or pay people to do this work?
15. Documents that explain the people’s
role in representative government
Think
about: Magna Carta and Mayflower
compact.
What did they say about the role of the
people?
16. Consequences of an increase
in colonial farming
Think
about: Whose land were the farmers
taking?
17. Examples of rights guaranteed to citizens by
the Magna Carta and English Bill of Rights
Think about: What were some of these
rights?
18. Why colonists tended to settle
near rivers
Thinkabout: What would settlers get from
the rivers?
19. Why the Intolerable Acts upset
Boston’s people
Thinkabout: Why were these acts
created?
What activities were restricted?
20. Why the deaths at the Boston
Massacre were important
Howdid the Sons of Liberty use these
deaths?
21. How living in the colonies changed the way
Americans thought about government
Think about: What is salutary neglect?
How was England like parents who left
their kids in the care of their big brother?
What did colonists get used to?
22. What common ideas linked the Mayflower
Compact, Virginia House of Burgesses, and
the Fundamental Orders of CT
How did these documents instruct
colonists to rule themselves?
How did they decide on laws?
23. Why the Proclamation of 1763
upset the colonists
Think about: What did colonists expect
after the French and Indian War?
How did this proclamation restrict the
colonists?
24. How the roles of Samuel Adams, Thomas
Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin during the
American Revolution were similar.
We may not be to this material by the
time that you start studying.
What side were all of these men on?
Where did they live?
25. What John Locke said about where
governments get their power.
Thinkabout: What did John Locke say
colonists should be able to do to a
government they don’t like?
Why?