Indiana Social Studies 5.G.6
The Standard
Describe the ways Native Americans, Africans, immigrant groups, and colonists adapted to variations in the physical environment.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students use maps and images to identify a place’s climate, water, land, or materials. They explain how those conditions shaped what people built, grew, or did for work.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student links Pueblo adobe homes to local clay and New England colonists’ timber homes to forests. They explain how enslaved Africans used rice-growing knowledge in South Carolina wetlands. They also link Chinese immigrant miners’ work to California streams.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think all Native nations built the same homes or that all immigrant groups settled in the same places. They may describe rice farming by enslaved Africans as a free choice, rather than forced labor. Some name a river or forest without explaining how people used it.
How to Assess It
- Give students a chart with Pueblo builders, enslaved Africans in South Carolina, Chinese miners in California, and New England colonists. For each, ask them to name one local feature and explain how people responded to it.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Have pairs build small walls from clay and straw, then spray one with water to see why adobe suited a dry climate.
Ask: How did rice-growing knowledge help enslaved Africans work in South Carolina wetlands, and what choices were denied to them?
Match cards for Pueblo adobe, South Carolina rice fields, Chinese stream mining, and New England timber houses to labeled maps.
Compare photos of a modern adobe home and a Pueblo adobe home, then circle the local material both use.
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Printable 5.G.6 Worksheet
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