Indiana Social Studies IS.3.5
The Standard
Explain the importance of major transportation routes, including rivers, in the exploration, settlement and growth of Indiana and in the state’s location within the country, continent, and world.
2026 Indiana Academic Standards: K-12 Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students locate Indiana within the United States, North America, and the world. They trace rivers, roads, rail lines, and highways, then explain how those routes helped people settle Indiana and move goods to wider markets.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can trace a shipment from an Ohio River town through the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. They can explain why a town grew along that route and how a later railroad or highway changed its connections.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think rivers mattered only as sources of water, not as travel and trade routes. They may also assume settlers used today's highways or that Indiana's lack of an ocean coast cut it off from overseas trade.
How to Assess It
- On a map, have students trace a route from Evansville to the Gulf of Mexico. Ask them to write one sentence explaining how that route could help a town grow.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a Midwest map and blue yarn; have them trace the Wabash and Ohio Rivers and mark Vincennes and Evansville.
Ask students to write two reasons a family in 1820 might choose an Ohio River town over an inland site.
Deal riverboat, National Road, railroad, and interstate cards; have students match each to an Indiana travel scenario and explain their choice.
Take the label from an Indiana-made product and map a possible route by truck and Great Lakes freighter to an overseas buyer.
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Printable IS.3.5 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to IS.3.5, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- IS.1.4
Explain the importance of the Revolutionary War and other key events and people that influenced the development of Indiana as a state.
- IS.3.7
Examine Indiana’s relationships with states, countries, and world regions and understand the significance of these relationships to Indiana’s past, present, and...
- 4.G.6
Explain the importance of major transportation routes in the exploration, settlement, and growth of Indiana and in the state’s location as a crossroad of Americ...
- 4.H.3
Explain the importance of the Revolutionary War and other key events and people that impacted the development of Indiana.
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