Boats in Our Harbor
CAC-LES-001 | Pre-K | Gloucester | History and Social Science, Mathematics, English Language Arts | - Children will be able to name at least one shape (circle, square, rectangle or triangle) they find in a boat, sail or flag.
- Children will be able to tell one thing a harbor helper (a fisherman, the harbormaster or the Coast Guard) does at work.
- Children will be able to build a boat or a harbor with blocks and tell an adult one thing about it.
- Children will be able to answer one question about a short informational passage read aloud.
| PK.G.A.2, PreK.T4, standard 1, PreK.T2, standard 3, RI.PK.1 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Who Helps at the Shore?
CAC-LES-002 | Pre-K | Rockport | Science, History and Social Science, English Language Arts | - Children will be able to tell one way a lighthouse helps boats.
- Children will be able to observe the weather and choose the matching word for the class weather chart (sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy, foggy or snowy).
- Children will be able to give one example of how weather changes what people, animals or boats do.
- Children will be able to use a helping sentence such as Can you help me, please? in role play.
| PreK-ESS2-4(MA), PreK-ESS2-6(MA), PreK.T4, standard 1, RI.PK.1, SL.PK.3 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Building a Schooner in Essex
CAC-LES-003 | Kindergarten to grade 2 | Essex | Science and Engineering, History and Social Science, Mathematics | - Students will be able to explain that Essex shipbuilders used wood from trees that grew near the town.
- Students will be able to test at least five materials and record whether each one sinks or floats.
- Students will be able to draw two different boat plans before building.
- Students will be able to build a foil or clay boat, test how many pennies it holds and compare it with a classmate's boat.
| 1.T4, standard 1 (shared with grade 2 as 2.T5, standard 1), 2-PS1-2, 1.K-2-ETS1-2, 2.K-2-ETS1-3 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Weather Watchers by the Sea
CAC-LES-004 | Kindergarten to grade 2 | Manchester-by-the-Sea | Science, History and Social Science, Mathematics | - Students will be able to observe the daily weather and record it with tally marks on a class chart for 10 school days.
- Students will be able to count the tallies and tell which kind of weather happened most and least.
- Students will be able to find Manchester-by-the-Sea on a Massachusetts map and name the ocean, a beach and the harbor on a class coast map.
- Students will be able to use a simple forecast to decide what a boater or a beachgoer should do and give a reason.
| K-ESS2-1, K-ESS3-2, 2-ESS2-2, K.T2, standard 4 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Reading a Town's Memory
CAC-LES-005 | Grades 3 to 5 | Manchester-by-the-Sea | History and Social Science, Mathematics, English Language Arts | - Students will be able to read entries in an 1895 town history list and explain what the year, the names and short notes in an entry tell them.
- Students will be able to sort names from the list into time periods and record them with tally marks, with no more than 2 counting errors per card.
- Students will be able to draw a scaled bar graph in which each square stands for 10 names, with a title, labeled categories and a labeled scale.
- Students will be able to solve at least three one-step or two-step "how many more" and "how many fewer" problems using their bar graph.
- Students will be able to name at least two things the list tells us and two things it leaves out, using evidence from the source.
| 3.MD.B.3, W.3.8, RI.3.7, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 3 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Granite, Schooners and Fish: How Cape Ann Towns Made a Living
CAC-LES-006 | Grades 3 to 5 | Rockport, Essex, Gloucester | History and Social Science, Geography, English Language Arts | - Students will be able to locate Rockport, Essex and Gloucester on a current map of Massachusetts and describe where each town is using cardinal directions, the map scale, the legend and the title.
- Students will be able to name the natural resource or feature behind each town's main industry and support it with one fact quoted from a primary source.
- Students will be able to explain at least two ways people in these towns adapted to or changed their environment to do their work.
- Students will be able to describe one way the work of two towns was connected, using evidence from the readings.
- Students will be able to teach their expert topic to classmates in about four minutes and record notes from the other two experts.
| 3.T1, standard 1, 3.T5, standard 5, 4.T4a (The Northeast), standard 4, 1.T4, standard 1 (shared with grade 2 as 2.T5, standard 1) | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
What a Register Can and Cannot Tell Us
CAC-LES-007 | Grades 6 to 8 | Gloucester | History and Social Science, English Language Arts, Mathematics, Digital Literacy and Computer Science | - Students will be able to source the City of Gloucester Lost at Sea register by identifying who compiled it, when, from what earlier work and for what purpose.
- Students will be able to compare the crew of the schooner Joseph F. Allen as listed in the register with the 1882 Fishermen's Own Book and explain at least two differences, including a name variant, using specific evidence.
- Students will be able to explain what a date "as recorded" means and why a recorded date may not be the day an event happened.
- Students will be able to distinguish birthplace, residence and homeport in a record and avoid claims the record does not support.
- Students will be able to sort, filter and search a 211-row data table to answer at least five questions, reporting at least one result as a percent and one as a chart.
- Students will be able to tell a statistical question from a non-statistical one and judge whether the register can fully, partly or not at all answer it.
| RCA-H.6-8.1, RCA-H.6-8.6, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 3, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 5, 6-8.CT.c.4, 6.SP.A.1 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Storm, Ledge and Rescue: Navigation and the 1892 Gallatin
CAC-LES-008 | Grades 6 to 8 | Manchester-by-the-Sea, Gloucester | Science and Engineering, History and Social Science, English Language Arts | - Students will be able to interpret 1892 weather data to describe how a low-pressure center moving into southern New England produced east gales and snow on the Cape Ann coast, and explain the role of warm and cold air masses.
- Students will be able to build a timeline of the navigation steps the crew took from a primary source and identify, with a quotation, the moment the ship's position was misjudged.
- Students will be able to explain a lighthouse light or sound signal as a communication system, naming its source, encoder, transmitter, receiver, decoder and storage.
- Students will be able to write a design brief for marking or warning of a sunken ledge, with at least three precise criteria and three constraints, including at least one impact on people and one on the natural environment.
| 8.MS-ESS2-5, 6.MS-ETS1-1, 7.MS-ETS3-1(MA), RCA-H.6-8.1 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Two Accounts of One Wreck
CAC-LES-009 | Grades 9 to 12 | Manchester-by-the-Sea, Rockport | History and Social Science, English Language Arts, News and Media Literacy | - Students will be able to identify the creator, date, purpose and distance from the event for each of seven short sources about the Jan. 6, 1892, wreck of the revenue cutter Gallatin.
- Students will be able to build a corroboration matrix that records whether each source supports, contradicts or does not mention each of 10 claims about who died and how.
- Students will be able to rate each claim as verified, probable, contested or unknown and justify the rating by naming at least two sources and noting whether those sources are independent of each other.
- Students will be able to explain a one-day date conflict between a federal record and a newspaper-based account of the 1946 grounding of the Charles S. Haight and write a sentence that reports the date without claiming more certainty than the records allow.
- Students will be able to write a 200- to 300-word 'What we know / What we don't' note that attributes every fact to a source and names the dead man respectfully and accurately.
| RCA-H.9-10.6, RCA-H.11-12.8, RCA-H.11-12.9, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 4, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 5, News/Media Literacy [NML], Topic 3 [T3], standard 2, News/Media Literacy [NML], Topic 4 [T4], standard 3, RCA-H.11-12.6, Standards for History and Social Science Practice [PS], Practice 7 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Who Went Fishing? Migration and Labor in Gloucester's Fleet
CAC-LES-010 | Grades 9 to 12 | Gloucester | History and Social Science, Mathematics, Digital Literacy and Computer Science | - Students will be able to write a testable hypothesis about the birthplaces of Gloucester fishermen in 1876, 1895 and 1910 to 1912 before looking at the data.
- Students will be able to count entries by normalized birthplace and region for three samples and report each count as a percentage of entries that give a birthplace.
- Students will be able to count and report the entries with no birthplace and explain how missing data limits each sample.
- Students will be able to apply and critique a set of normalization rules, recoding at least three hard cases and explaining how a different rule would change the results.
- Students will be able to combine their counts with two public domain primary sources from 1875 and 1887 to explain at least one cause of migration into Gloucester's fleet, citing evidence from both.
- Students will be able to name at least three limits of a death register as evidence about a workforce.
| USI.T6 (Rebuilding the United States: industry and immigration), standard 4, RCA-H.9-10.7, RCA-H.11-12.9, 9-12.CT.c.4 | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Building a Responsible Historical Dataset
CAC-LES-011 | College and adult education | Gloucester, Rockport, Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea | History, Data Literacy, Information Science, Journalism | - Participants will be able to explain record linkage and the difference between a false merge and a missed link, using examples from Cape Ann records.
- Participants will be able to classify at least seven related record clusters as same, probable, possible, different or cannot tell, and justify each decision with evidence and a named next source.
- Participants will be able to encode historical dates that are exact, month only, year only, ranged or conflicting without losing the date as recorded.
- Participants will be able to sort sources into public domain, facts only and restricted, and state what each allows a publisher to do.
- Participants will be able to write publishing rules that protect the dignity of people in the records and the privacy of their living families.
| None (see note) | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
Covering Loss: Journalism Ethics and Maritime Remembrance
CAC-LES-012 | College and adult education | Gloucester, Rockport, Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea | Journalism, Media Ethics, History | - Participants will be able to identify at least eight ethical or factual problems in a draft remembrance paragraph and explain why each matters.
- Participants will be able to rewrite a remembrance paragraph that uses plain, accurate language, verified names and roles and correct date precision.
- Participants will be able to write one sentence that reports a death honestly when sources conflict, attributing each version.
- Participants will be able to apply rules for privacy, image rights and AI-generated images to realistic scenarios involving historical and recent losses.
- Participants will be able to write a correction line that states what was wrong and what is right without hiding the error.
| None (see note) | Draft: awaiting classroom teacher review; version 1.0; published |
