San Francisco Maritime
National Historical Park
San Francisco Maritime
National Historical Park
The California State Framework for Social Studies for the Fourth grade has the theme, California: A Changing State. This course emphasizes the suggestive wave of changes that have washed over this state and which have led to its present development.
Many of the sub-themes listed in the framework have a strong Maritime component. The purpose of this curriculum packet is to supplement your social studies program and link it with the substantial maritime heritage of this state. This will allow you to theme your course of study throughout the year as California and the Sea. The course will be greatly enhanced by the first hand experience of visiting the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park and touching history directly.
The lessons which follow are designed to follow five of the seven themes for the fourth grade course. These are:
1. The Physical Setting
2. Pre-Columbian Settlement and People
3. Exploration and Colonial History
4. Large Scale Agriculture and Linkages to the Rest
of the United States
5. Modern California: Immigration, Technology and
Cities
Changes in transportation reflected the general changes that have occurred (and which continue today) in California. Our ships and museum artifacts are vivid storytellers of man of these changes. The lessons in this packet are designed to unlock those stories and help your class to connect directly with the history in our park.
Each lesson (and accompanying material, such as photos or graphics) is available in the Adobe Acrobat (extension .pdf) format. Using an Acrobat viewer (which operates as a free "plug-in" with your web browser -- we have provided a link from which you can download the plug-in in case it is not already loaded on your computer) you can preview the lessons, then print them out for use (some versions of the Arobat plug-in also allow you to save the lessons right to your hard drive -- and that's fine with us). Just go to the Table of Contents page, click on a lesson, and after it downloads onto your computer the lesson pages will appear on your screen exactly (well, almost) like they will print out.
The link to the Acrobat web site (for downloading the free plug-in) is at the bottom of the Table of Contents page.
We have also supplied HTML versions of all the lesson plans, and HTML links to many of the graphics (as .jpg files). The HTML (simple web page version) links aren't as pretty as the PDFs, but the information is the same (and they will place less strain on older hardware/slower internet connections). You are welcome to print-out those pages, or save them to your own hard disk (if you "save as text file" you can open them locally with your favorite word processor).
We hope you enjoy the materials and we look forward to your visit to our collection of historic vessels.
