Skip to content
PlayOwl

Find a course

Search every subject world, from Preschool to Grade 12. The first five courses of every subject path are free.

16 courses

Courses found

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Inquiry and Primary Sources

Fifth graders sharpen the historian's toolkit with real primary sources from early America: Benjamin Franklin's 1754 'Join, or Die' cartoon, Thomas Paine's 1776 'The American Crisis', and two conflicting accounts of the 1770 Boston Massacre. They ask inquiry questions, source and contextualize documents, detect point of view and loaded language, and corroborate evidence to judge reliability.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 95 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Indigenous North America before European Colonization

Fifth graders explore the diversity of Indigenous North America before 1492: how environments from the Arctic to the Southwest shaped homes, food and work; how nations governed themselves, including the Haudenosaunee Confederacy; the agricultural knowledge (maize, the Three Sisters, irrigation) and trade networks that connected the continent; and how historians use archaeology and oral tradition while avoiding stereotypes.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 100 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Colonization and Diverse Colonial Experiences

Fifth graders examine why Spain, France, the Netherlands and England explored and colonized North America and where they settled; trace the Columbian Exchange of plants, animals and diseases; compare the economies of the New England, Middle and Southern colonies; and compare how colonization was experienced by Native nations, enslaved Africans, indentured servants, women and free colonists.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 105 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Conflict, Revolution and Independence

Fifth graders trace the chain of causes from the French and Indian War to the Declaration of Independence, follow the major turning points of the Revolutionary War from Lexington and Concord to Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris, close-read the Declaration's big ideas and grievances, and compare how Patriots, Loyalists, enslaved and free Black Americans, Native nations and women experienced the Revolution.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 110 min
  • Quiz: 10 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Founding Documents and Constitutional Ideas

Fifth graders learn why the first national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak, how delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention reached compromises (including the Great Compromise and the Three-Fifths Compromise), how the Constitution's principles (popular sovereignty, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism) limit power, and how the debate over ratification led to the Bill of Rights.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 110 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Early Republic, Expansion and Consequences

Fifth graders follow the young United States from George Washington's first term and the first peaceful transfer of power, through the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition (and the Native nations who made it possible), to the growth of the nation's territory by 1848, and they weigh its consequences: new land for settlers, fierce debates over slavery's spread, and forced removal of Native nations such as the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 110 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Economics, Rights and Civic Action

Fifth graders connect money, rights and action: how Britain's trade rules and colonial boycotts used economic pressure, how incentives and costs shape choices, how governments pay for public goods with taxes, how rights expanded through amendments won by citizens' movements from the 13th to the 26th Amendment, and how people today can use the same civic tools to work for change.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 105 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 5

Research Multiple Perspectives on a Historical Question

In this capstone, fifth graders investigate a compelling question: was the American Revolution revolutionary for everyone? They read Abigail and John Adams's 1776 letters, study the 1777 freedom petition led by Prince Hall, and examine the experiences of Native nations, Loyalists and Black Loyalists, then write an evidence-based argument that weighs multiple perspectives and answers a counterclaim.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 110 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Historical Inquiry and Archaeological Evidence

Learners find out how we know anything about the distant past. They sort primary and secondary sources, read the layers of a dig to put finds in order, use radiocarbon half-lives to estimate ages, separate what an artifact shows from what we infer about it, and finish by writing a claim backed by evidence and an honest statement of its limits.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 85 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Early Humans and Agricultural Change

Learners follow modern humans from Africa across the world, then investigate how and where people began to farm, not once but in several places. They weigh the gains and costs of farming using skeletons, seeds and settlements as evidence, and finish by arguing about a real puzzle: a huge stone monument built before farming took hold.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 90 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

River Civilizations and Institutions

Learners locate the first river-valley civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and China and explain how floods, silt and irrigation made cities possible. They identify the institutions that held these societies together, read short excerpts of Hammurabi's laws as a primary source, and write a comparison of two civilizations backed by evidence.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 95 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Ancient Mediterranean Societies

Learners sail the ancient Mediterranean: Phoenician traders spread an alphabet, Athens invents a democracy that most of its people could not join, Sparta builds a military state, and Rome grows from a republic into an empire. Along the way they source a famous speech reported by Thucydides and judge how far it can be trusted.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 100 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Ancient Asian Societies and Exchange

Learners study how Chinese rulers claimed the right to rule and how the Qin and Han unified a vast land, compare Confucian, Daoist and Legalist answers to the question of how to keep order, and meet the Maurya and Gupta empires of India. They finish on the Silk Roads, tracing how goods, beliefs and technologies moved across Asia.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 100 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions
Free starter

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

African and American Societies in Comparative Context

Learners investigate Kush and Aksum in northeast Africa, the Nok culture and the Bantu expansion, and the Olmec, Maya, Chavín and Ancestral Puebloan societies of the Americas. They compare societies with a clear framework and ask a deeper question: how does the kind of evidence that survives shape what we can know?

  • 4 lessons
  • About 100 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Belief, Government, Economy and Trade

This course steps back from single civilizations to look at four big themes across the ancient world: how people were governed and why rulers claimed the right to rule, what major belief systems taught, how economies moved from barter to coins, and how trade linked distant peoples. Learners finish by testing a big claim against evidence from several societies.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 100 min
  • Quiz: 9 questions

History, Civics & Social Studies · Grade 6

Compare Civilizations with Sources and Arguments

In this capstone, learners carry out a complete comparative inquiry: they choose a strong comparison question, source a small set of primary documents and artifacts, build a thesis with evidence and counterevidence, and write and revise an argument comparing two ancient civilizations.

  • 4 lessons
  • About 120 min
  • Quiz: 8 questions