Land and first communities
Compare Texas regions and climates, then investigate Native nations, Gulf Coast communities, exploration, and missions through maps and evidence.
Dynamic History / Texas history / Grade 4
Texas Grade 4 History & Social Studies
A year of Texas history, told through the places where choices were made.
Twenty-four mapped investigations help students connect geography, people, evidence, and civic life across Texas history.
24 lessons available · Guided map investigations
24 weeksTrace the evidence.
Question the map.
Question the map.
The story behind the map
Follow the land. Then follow the people and the choices.
The sequence begins with Texas regions, climate, and resources. Students compare the ways Native nations lived with the land, then examine Spanish missions, Mexican Texas, and the choices that led to revolution and statehood.
Later weeks move through the Republic, annexation, emancipation and Reconstruction, cattle and railroads, oil, industry, government, and civic action. Each week gives students a place to locate and evidence to weigh, so a long state history becomes a series of focused questions.
See the series in action
See the Texas Grade 4 series in action
Watch a preview of the map based Texas history and social studies experience.
Series preview · Texas Grade 4 History & Social Studies
What students investigate
Three connected lines of inquiry
Revolution and a changing state
Trace Mexican Texas, the Revolution, the Republic, annexation, war, emancipation, and Reconstruction through the places where they happened.
Industry and civic life
Follow cattle trails, railroads, oil fields, cities, public symbols, founding documents, and the ways Texans act in government today.
The series
Explore the 24 lessons
Browse all 24 weekly investigations. The first week is free; each week has its own module and, where listed, its own product page.
Texas State Week 1 - The Regions of Texas
Move across Texas with synchronized reading, image evidence, and geographic reasoning.
Texas State Week 2 - Climate Clues Across Texas
Track Texas climate clues, connect resources to work and towns, tell adaptation from modification, and weigh a High Plains water choice.
Texas State Week 3 - First Texans: Comparing American Indian Groups
Investigate different lands, economies, governments, and living Native nations across six guided stops.
Texas State Week 4 - Karankawa Gulf Coast: Land, Water, and Ways of Life
Explore Gulf Coast geography, seasonal movement, archaeology, technology, source limits, and living continuity across six clear learning stops.
Texas State Week 5 - European Explorers in Texas
Compare motives, reconstructed routes, primary sources, artifacts, and consequences across six guided stops.
Texas State Week 6 - Spanish Missions in Texas
Use maps, archaeology, real photographs, and living-community sources to explain why Spain built missions and how mission systems changed Texas.
Texas State Week 7 - Mexican Independence, Mexican Texas & Empresarios
Learn how Texas changed from Spanish to Mexican rule, why Mexico used empresarios, and how Austin and de León organized settlements.
Texas State Week 8 - Mexican Texas: Settlement, Power, and Control
Trace how Mexico governed, settled, and tried to control a growing Texas network from 1821 to 1833.
Texas State Week 9 - When Disagreement Became Revolution
Six-stop historical-voices and map-evidence investigation of how disagreement became revolution
Texas State Week 10 - The Alamo: Battle, Memory & Evidence
Investigate the Alamo through place, messages, sources, preservation, and public memory.
Texas State Week 11 - Goliad, Runaway Scrape & San Jacinto
Trace movement from Goliad through the Runaway Scrape and Houston's campaign to San Jacinto.
Texas State Week 12 - Building the Republic of Texas
Rules, money, land, leadership, and the choices that shaped a new republic
Texas State Week 13 - Joining the United States
Annexation, statehood, a disputed border, and the war that redrew the map
Texas State Week 14 - Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction
Secession, a blockaded coast, the geography of slavery, emancipation, and the rebuilding that followed
Texas State Week 15 - Cattle, Railroads, Buffalo & the Red River War
Trail drives, rail junctions, frontier forts, the hide trade, and the Red River War
Texas State Week 16 - The Fence Cutting War of 1883
Barbed wire, a drought, water behind the wire, night riders, and the law of January 1884
Texas State Week 17 - Spindletop and the Oil Boom
A hill south of Beaumont, a well nobody could shut off, and the towns, ports, and bayous it changed
Texas State Week 18 - Markets, Cities, and Texas Inventors
A bale of cotton, a rail crossing, and four people who turned a problem nobody had solved into something other people could use
Texas State Week 19 - Dust, Depression, and the War Years
Two towns in the dust, a family following the harvest, and three war jobs that each went exactly where the map said they had to
Texas State Week 20 - Too Much Oil
A broke old man finds the biggest oil field in the country, and within a year the state sends soldiers to shut it down
Texas State Week 21 - Papers That Still Have Power
Follow four founding documents from the rooms where they were written to the courts, chambers, and classrooms they still govern.
Texas State Week 22 - What Texas Chose to Remember
The six flags, the state song, a holiday, three festivals and a corrected monument — every one of them chosen by somebody
Texas State Week 23 - Your Side of the Counter
Six governments reach your front door, three real Texas votes were counted and signed for, and three Texans used the same tools without waiting for permission.
Texas State Week 24 - The Long Walk to Austin
A melon field, four hundred miles of road, and one question for the state government
For teachers and curious students
Make a full year of Texas history visible.
Start with the free regions lesson, then use the weekly investigations to connect the physical map to the decisions, communities, and institutions students study all year.
Begin with the free lesson