This Teacher’s Guide is designed to enrich teaching Lands of Our Ancestors Book Three across the curriculum. After this introduction, the guide begins with the California Content Standards for 4th grade History-Social Sciences the book addresses. This will provide teachers with important information about what the focus should be in teaching the Mexican-American War, Gold Rush and Early Statehood periods.

Section Three contains Overviews of the periods addressed in Book Three. This is followed by a section that validates the accuracy of the events portrayed in Book Three. Section Five provides pages of Images of Life during the era. These images help illustrate the story for students. Because the characters relocate several times during the story, Section Six is a list of the main geographic locations of the book.

Next, the guide provides a list of additional sources of information about the Chumash people, the Gold Rush and Statehood, if needed, for further research.

The next section of the guide contains the same Characters and Relationships reference as well as the Timeline found in the book. Section ten, the largest section of this guide, contains Questions, Answers, and Words to Know for each chapter of Book Three. The questions can be used in teacher-directed class discussions, small group discussions, or as written work. The variety of questions in each chapter align with The Six Levels of Questioning: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Answers are provided for all chapter questions. New vocabulary, including words from the Samala Chumash, other tribes, and Spanish languages, are found in each chapter’s Words to Know section.