Letter from Christopher Columbus: Common Core Unit

This lesson on Christopher Columbus’s letter of 1493 on his discoveries in the New World is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate this knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core Standards.