Colonial Era to Reconstruction Era
Are you looking for a history curriculum for your homeschooled student? Let me share with you our experience with U.S. History Detective Book One so that you may determine whether this curriculum would be a good fit for your family.
Over the course of elementary and junior high school years we have gone over number Christian history curricula of both U.S. and world history. When we reached 8th grade, my husband found The Critical Thinking Co. and their U.S. History Detective Book 1 by Steven Greif aimed at students between 8th and 12th grade. Even though this book is written for a secular audience, we liked its structure and the integration of critical thinking into the lessons. So we gave it a try and were not disappointed!
How Is the U.S. History Detective Book One Structured?
- There are 65 lessons broken down into 9 sections with 6-10 lessons in each section.
- Each lesson includes 2-3 pages of text, including maps and charts, and ten review questions. Nine of these questions are either a multiple choice or requiring only simple written answers, one is a “Written Response Question” which equals to a short essay.
- Multiple lessons review activities are scattered throughout the book and provide a nice reminder of the material already learned.
- The study pages include both black and white and colored maps, charts, and pictures.
- The answers to the reviews are located at the end of the book.
- You can view sample pages of this curriculum here.
What Did We Like About U.S. History Detective Book One?
- The book provides in-depth, interesting and thorough information and encourages independent studies with little input from the teacher. There are no lesson plans needed for this curriculum.
- Each sentence in the text is numbered and the review questions require the proper answer as well as the number of a sentence that best supports the answer. This encourages the student not only to read through the text but also to work with the text.
- The short essays help the student develop their critical thinking skills and, as an added bonus, strengthen their writing skills.
What Did We NOT Like About U.S. History Detective Book One?
If you ask my son what he didn’t like about this curriculum, he will not hesitate to tell you about the dreadful short essays at the end of each chapter. Yet, from my perspective, these were very essential in helping develop his critical thinking as well as writing skills.
What Was the Best Part About Using This Curriculum?
After we have completed all 65 lessons, we quickly read through a college level U.S. history textbook in preparation for a college CLEP exam. Surprisingly, most of the material in the college textbook was only a slightly expanded review of the material presented in U.S. History Detective Book One. After a couple of practice exam, my 14-year-old was able to pass his first college CLEP exam with excellent results. Thank you, Critical Thinking Co.! [You can read about our adventure taking the first CLEP exam in How to Take History of the United States I CLEP Exam for FREE.]
In summary, we were thoroughly pleased with U.S. History Detective Book One. Even though studying the modern U.S. history took us in a different direction, we returned to Critical Thinking Co. for the World History Detective. I am planning on sharing with you about this curriculum sometime in the future.
Which curriculum have you used for studying U.S. history? Please share with us in the comment section below. We would love to hear from you!
You Might Also Like
