Lesson 3: Europeans explore the Americas
Duration of Days: 4
Lesson Objective
Students will evaluate how European exploration of the Americas reshaped societies by analyzing power imbalances and their consequences.
How did European exploration reshape the Americas politically and socially?
How did power imbalances affect outcomes of contact?
How should historians evaluate expansion when consequences are unequal?
Colonization
Power imbalance
Exploitation
HIS.9-12.6 Analyze how power, authority, and governance influence historical outcomes.
HIS.9-12.7 Analyze how social, political, and economic structures shape human interactions.
Students construct analytical claims and support them with evidence from multiple sources.
Students examine European expansion into the Americas with an emphasis on power, inequality, and consequence. Primary DOK level: 4.
Connections to modern discussions about inequality, colonization, and historical legacy.
Students may treat outcomes as inevitable.
Students may oversimplify colonization as a one-sided or uniform process.
Chunked source analysis.
Optional visual or written synthesis formats.
Claim-evidence-reasoning paragraph analyzing power and consequence.
Primary accounts, demographic charts, maps.