History and Geography: Grade 5

I. World Geography

A. Spatial Sense (Working with Maps, Globes, and other Geographic Tools)

Read maps and globes using longitude and latitude, coordinates, degrees.

Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn: relation to seasons to temperature

Climate zones: Arctic, Tropic, Temperature

Time zones (review from Grade 4): Prime Meridian (0 degrees): Greenwich,

England; 180 Line (International Date Line)

Arctic Circle (imaginary lines and boundaries) and Antarctic Circle

From a round globe to a flat map: Mercator projection, conic and plan projections

B. Great Lakes of the World

Eurasia: Caspian Sea

Asia: Aral Sea

Africa: Victoria, Tanganyika, Chad

North America: Superior, Huron, Michigan

South America: Maracaibo, Titicaca

II. Meso-American Civilization

A. Geography

Identify and locate Central America and South America on maps and globes.

Largest countries in South America: Brazil and Argentina

Amazon River

Andes Mountains

B. Maya, Inca, and Aztec Civilizations

The Mayas

Ancient Mayans lived in what is now southern Mexico and parts of Central America; their descendants still live there today.

Accomplishments as architects and artisans: pyramids and temples

Development of a system of hieroglyphic writing

Knowledge of astronomy and mathematics; development of a 365 day calendar;

early use of concept of zero

The Aztecs

A warrior culture, at its height in the 1200s and early 1500s, the Aztec empire covered much of what is now central Mexico.

The island of Tenochtitlan: aqueducts, massive temples, etc.

Moctezuma (also spelled Montezuma)

Ruler-priests; practice of human sacrifice

The Inca

Ruled an empire stretching along the Pacific coast of South America

Built great cities (Machu Picchu, Cuzco) high in the Andes, connected by a system of roads

C. Spanish Conquerors

Conquistadors: Cortes and Pizzaro

Advantage of Spanish weapons (guns, cannons)

Diseases devastate native peoples

III. European Exploration, Trade and Colonization

A. Background

Beginning in the 1400s Europeans set forth in a great wave of exploration and trade.

European motivations

Muslims controlled many trade routes.

Profit through trade in goods such as gold, silver, silks, sugar, and spices

Spread of Christianity: missionaries, Bartolome de las Casas speaks out against enslavement and mistreatment of native peoples

Geography of the spice trade

The Moluccas, also called the “Spice Islands” part of present-day Indonesia Locate: the region known as Indochina, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines Definition of “archipelago”

“Ring of Fire”: earthquakes and volcanic activity

B. European Exploration, Trade, and Colonization

Portugal

Prince Henry the Navigator, exploration of the West African coast

Bartolomeu Dias rounds the Cape of Good Hope

Vasco da Gama: spice trade with India, exploration of East Africa

Portuguese conquer East African Swahili city-states

Cabral claims Brazil

Spain

Two worlds meet: Christopher Columbus and the Tainos

Treaty of Tordesillas between Portugal and Spain

Magellan crosses the Pacific, one of his ships returns to Spain, making the first round-the-world voyage

Balboa reaches the Pacific

England and France

Search for Northwest Passage (review from grade 3)

Colonies in North America and West Indies

Trading posts in India

Holland (The Neatherlands)

The Dutch take over Portuguese trade routes and colonies in Africa and the East Indies

The Dutch in South Africa, Cape Town

The Dutch in North America: New Netherlands (review from grade 3), later lost to England

C. Trade and Slavery

The sugar trade

African slaves on Portuguese sugar plantations on islands off West African coast, such as Sao Tome.

Sugar plantations on Caribbean islands

West Indies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica

Transatlantic slave trade: the “triangular trade” from Europe to Africa to colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas

The “Slave Coast” in West Africa

The Middle Passage

IV. The Renaissance and the Reformation

A. The Renaissance

Islamic scholars translate Greek words and so help preserve classical civilization.

A “rebirth” of ideas from ancient Greece and Rome

Patrons of the arts and learning

The Medici Family and Florence

The Popes and Rome

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo

Renaisance ideals and values as embodied in

The Courtier by Castiglione: the “Renaissance Man”

The Prince by Machiavelli: real-world politics

B. The Reformation

Gutenberg’s printing press: the Bible made widely available

The Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther and the 95 Theses

John Calvin

The Counter-Reformation

Copernicus and Galileo: Conflicts between science and the church

Ptolemaic (earth-centered) vs. sun-centered models of the universe

V. England from the Golden Age to the Glorious Revolution

A. England in the Golden Age

Henry VIII and the Church of England

Elizabeth I

British naval dominance

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

Sir Francis Drake

British exploration and North American settlements

B. From the English Revolution to the Glorious Revolution

The English Revolution

King Charles I, Puritans and Parliament

Civil War: Cavaliers and Roundheads

Execution of Charles I

Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan regime

The Restoration (1660): Charles II restored to the English throne, many Puritans leave England for America

The “Glorious Revolution” (also called the Bloodless Revolution)

King James II replaced by William and Mary

Bill of Rights: Parliament limits the power of the monarchy

VI. Russia: Early Growth and Expansion

A. History and Culture

Russia as successor to Byzantine Empire: Moscow as new center of Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine culture (after the fall of Constantinople in 1453)

Ivan III (the Great), czar (from the Latin “Caesar”)

Ivan IV (the Terrible)

Peter the Great: modernizing and “Westernizing” Russia

Catherine the Great

Reforms of Peter and Catherine make life even harder for peasants

B. Geography

Moscow and St. Petersburg

Ural Mountains, Siberia, steppes

Volga and Don Rivers

Black, Caspian, and Baltic Seas

Search for a warm-water port

VII. Feudal Japan

A. History and Culture

Emperor as nominal leader, but real power in the hands of shoguns

Samurai, code of Bushido

Rigid class system in feudal Japanese society

Japan closed to outsiders

Religion

Buddhism: the four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, Nirvana

Shintoism: reverence for ancestors, reverence for nature, kami

B. Geography

Pacific Ocean, Sea of Japan

Four main islands: Hokkaido, Honshu (largest), Shikoku, Kyushu

Tokyo

Typhoons, earthquakes

The Pacific Rim

American History and Geography

I. Westward Expansion

A. Westward Expansion Before the Civil War

Early exploration of the west

Daniel Boone, Cumberland Gap, Wilderness Trail

Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea

“Mountain men,” fur trade

Zebulon Pike, Pike’s Peak

Pioneers

Getting there in wagon trains, flatboats, steamboats

Many pioneers set out from St. Louis (where Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet).

Land routes: Santa Fe Trail and Oregon Trail

Mormons (Latter-day Saints) settle in Utah, Brigham Young, Great Salt Lake Gold Rush, ‘49ers

Geography

Erie Canal connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie

Rivers: James, Hudson, St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Columbia, Rio Grande

Appalachian and Rocky Mountains

Great Plains stretching from Canada to Mexico

Continental Divide and the flow rivers: east of Rockies to the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans, west of Rockies to the Pacific Ocean

Indian resistance

More and more settlers move onto Indian lands, treaties made and broken Tecumseh (Shawnee): attempted to unite tribes in defending their land

Battle of Tippecanoe

Osceola, Seminole leader

Manifest Destiny and conflict with Mexico

The meaning of “manifest destiny”

Early settlement of Texas: Stephen Austin

General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Battle of the Alamo (“Remember the Alamo”), Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie

The Mexican War

General Zachary Taylor (“Old Rough and Ready”)

Some Americans strongly oppose the war, Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”

Mexican lands ceded to the United States (California, Nevada, Utah, parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona)

B. Westward Expansion after the Civil War

Homestead Act (1862), many thousands of Americans and immigrants start farms in the West

“Go west, young man” (Horace Greeley’s advice)

Railroads, Transcontinental Railroad links east and west, immigrant labor

Cowboys, cattle drives

The “wild west,” reality versus legend: Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill

“Buffalo Soldiers,” African American troops in the West

U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia, “Seward’s folly”

1890: the closing of the American frontier (as acknowledged in the U.S. Census, the symbolic significance of the frontier

II. The Civil War: Causes, Conflicts, Consequences

A. Toward the Civil War

Abolitionists: William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator, Frederick Douglass

Slave life and rebellions

Industrial North versus agricultural South

Mason-Dixon Line

Controversy over whether to allow slavery in territories and new states

Missouri Compromise of 1820

Dred Scott decision allows slavery in the territories

Importance of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

John Brown, Harper’s Ferry

Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Lincoln-Douglas debate

Lincoln elected president, Southern states secede

B. The Civil War

Fort Sumter

Confederacy, Jefferson Davis

Yankees and Rebels, Blue and Gray

First Battle of Bull Run

Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant

General Stonewall Jackson

Ironclad ships, battle of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack)

Battle of Antietam Creek

The Emancipation Proclamation

Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address

African-American troops, Massachusetts Regiment led by Colonel Shaw

Sherman’s march to the sea, burning of Atlanta

Lincoln re-elected, concluding words of the Second Inaugural Address (“With malice toward none, with charity for all…”)

Richmond (Confederate capital) falls to Union forces

Surrender at Appomattox

Assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth

C. Reconstruction

The South in ruins

Struggle for control of the South, Radical Republicans vs. Andrew Johnson, impeachment

Carpetbaggers and scalawags

Freedmen’s Bureau, “40 acres and a mule”

13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution

Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan and “vigilante justice”

End of Reconstruction, Compromise of 1877, all federal troops removed from the South

III. Native Americans: Cultures and Conflicts

A. Culture and Life

Great Basin and Plateau (for example, Shoshone, Ute, Nez Perce)

Northern and Southern Plains (for example, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota [Sioux], Shoshone, Blackfoot, Crow)

Extermination of buffalo (review from grade 2)

Pacific Northwest (for example, Chinook, Kwakiutl, Yakima)

B. American Government Policies

Bureau of Indian Affairs

Forced removal to reservations

Attempts to break down tribal life, assimilation policies, Carlisle School

C. Conflicts

Sand Creek Massacre

Little Big Horn: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Custer’s Last Stand

Wounded Knee

Ghost Dance

IV. U.S. Geography

Locate: Western Hemisphere, North America, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf Stream, how it affects climate

Regions and their characteristics: New England, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Great Plains, Southwest, West, Pacific Northwest

Fifty states and capitals