Texas TEKS 5.9.A
The Standard
explain the economic patterns of early European colonies
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify how colonists earned a living through farming, trade, fishing, and skilled work. They explain how land, climate, resources, and labor shaped regional economies.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students compare the economies of New England, Middle, and Southern colonies using specific evidence. They can explain why certain crops, industries, and trade networks developed in each region.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume every colony relied on the same crops and workers. They may also confuse subsistence farming with cash-crop farming or overlook the roles of indentured and enslaved labor.
How to Assess It
- Give students three region cards and ask them to match fishing, grain farming, and tobacco farming to a region. For each match, require one geographic reason.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups resource, climate, labor, and product cards to sort under New England, Middle, and Southern colony maps.
Ask students to write which colonial region offered the best chance for a farmer, then support their choice with two facts.
Play a region riddle game using clues such as rocky soil, long growing season, busy ports, wheat, tobacco, or shipbuilding.
Have students create a colonial shipping invoice listing one region's products, destination, workers, and transportation method.
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Printable 5.9.A Worksheet
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Related Standards
- 5.9.B
identify major industries of colonial America such as shipbuilding and growing of cash crops.
- 5.10.A
identify the development of the free enterprise system in colonial America and the United States;
- 5.9
Economics. The student understands the basic economic patterns of early societies in the United States. The student is expected to:
- 5.13.A
compare the systems of government of early European colonists, including representative government and monarchy ; and
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