interaction are required for the lessons. Parents or teachers will need to do some advance preparation as well.
Each course consists of a teacher manual and a student packet. Student packets come as loose-leaf packets of black-and-white pages and may be reproduced for class groups up to 25 students.
Lessons are taught from each spiral-bound teacher manual. For each lesson, the teacher manual lists the lesson objective, correlations with standards, an introduction to the lesson, detail for lesson presentation, an "assessment" activity (evaluation of whatever might be turned in or evaluated for that lesson), and a follow-up activity. Standards correlations are to Common Core State Standards for “Literacy in Social Studies/History” under Language Arts. There are also correlations to other standards for writing, speaking, and listening, as well as to some for math since lessons occasionally include math or language arts activities.
Lessons will take from 15 to 50 minutes of interaction. While information is included, it is often presented creatively such as in the form of an obituary, newspaper articles, or graphic organizers. Students will almost always interact with the information in some way, looking for key ideas, arguments, comparative information, etc.
Some lessons include puzzles and games. There are often activities that students might complete on their own, activities such as drawing a three-box comic strip depicting a missionary dispute (page 19 of the first book), drawing the student’s diocesan coat of arms and creating a graphic explaining the symbols (page 21 of the second book), and writing compositions or letters. Obviously, some assignments will take more time than others. You can choose whether or not to use the additional follow-up activity for each lesson. These generally involve research, writing, or hands-on projects. The variety of activities helps to address the needs of those with different learning styles, and the interaction will often be fun for students and teachers alike.
Lessons teach about heroes of the Catholic faith and challenge students to apply Catholic teaching and morality in various situations. Some lessons touch on political issues such as religious liberty, immigration, and government funding of Catholic schools, but when issues remain controversial today, they are presented in an open-ended fashion rather than promoting particular political actions. The series has obtained official approval with both the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur.
Finding affordable history resources that include a Catholic perspective can be challenging, so these Catholic Community history books should prove very useful, making it possible to use one of the many non-Catholic U.S. History resources. Since they are supplemental, and lessons need not be used in order, you can adapt your schedule to use them whenever works best for you.