The history of the Grand River is divided into six eras, from the Paleo Indians to present day. As outlined in the Unit Overview, each era has three resources associated with it:

1. A primary source reading related to the Grand River

2. Artifacts about the Grand River from that era

3. Summary of what happened to the Grand River during that era

Depending on the needs of your classroom, these eras could be covered as a whole class activity over a series of days, or small groups could become experts on their era and then share their findings with their classmates. Group sharing is easily facilitated by creating a large timeline on a wall using butcher paper and having students add details and share out about their era.

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Have students spend some time looking at and interpreting the artifacts. You might elect only to use one or two artifacts for a deeper examination, or you might want to offer a larger selection so students can gravitate toward the ones that speak to them. Practice with students making observations about the objects and inferences about what the objects imply about life at this time. What questions do they have about the people of this time?

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After reading their articles, have students predict what they think life was like during this time period.

Summaries provide students with information about some important events from the era they are studying. Students can complete their era's portion of the graph, putting in the important events of the time.