Exploring America: Curriculum Package

9th - 12th Grade

Providing students with an overview of American history from Columbus to the present day, Exploring America from Notgrass Company is a full-year high school course that presents US history from a Christian perspective.

This course is comprised of two primary texts and a volume of primary documents (American Voices). Each textbook unit is filled with conservational chapters and many full-color photographs of archival images, artifacts, and locations. In addition to reading the narrative about events, issues, and people, students will read original documents, speeches, poems, and stories in American Voices. They will also read classic literature (in books obtained independently) that help bring to life the time period under review.

Units begin with a summary and list of lessons, memory work, books used, and a project. Each lesson ends with readings from the book American Voices, additional literature assignments, and instructions for questions and quizzes (the optional review questions, quizzes and tests themselves are in the sold-separately Exploring America: Student Review Pack).

This updated 2014 edition features an expanded last chapter to take readers through the present, as well as a new layout that features full-color photographs, illustrations, and a hardcover binding. The literature used has also been altered.

One hundred and fifty lessons are divided into thirty units of five lessons each; students should expect to spend 50-60 minutes on each subject each day (total of 2.5-3 hours per day). This course, when all assignments are completed, provides one credit of American history, one credit of English, and one credit of Bible.

The following twelve works of literature are assigned:

• The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
• Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (David Crockett)
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Frederick Douglass)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
• Co. Aytch (Sam Watkins)
• Humorous Stories and Sketches (Mark Twain)
• In His Steps (Charles Sheldon)
• Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington)
• Mama's Bank Account (Kathryn Forbes)
• Miracle in the Hills (Mary T. Martin Sloop and LeGette Blythe)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
• The Giver (Lois Lowry)