Monday, October 5
OPT 26–34
How did English ideas about Ireland travel to America?
Stop before Virginia: To ‘Root Out’ Indians as a People.
Read with the taskAudio tracks 01–04
Weeks 7–8 · October 5–16
Four Question narrative
Connect Ireland with at least one American case. Explain the actions, the thinking, the conditions, and your judgment.
Weeks 7–8 · OPT Chapter 2
Your task
How did the English use the idea of the ‘savage’ to take other people’s land, first in Ireland and then in America?
- Read
- OPT 26–48, across three reading sessions
- Write
- Four connected paragraphs using the Four Question Method
- Due
- Friday, October 16
Four assigned wordsnarrativize · motive · ethics · judgment
Read
Use the exact reading boundaries and matching audio.
Before reading: Write your best one-sentence answer to the aim from memory. Leave a blank where you are unsure; return to it after reading.
Wednesday, October 7
OPT 34–44
How did land, profit, and beliefs shape colonial action?
Stop before Stolen Lands: A World Turned ‘Upside Down’.
Read with the taskAudio tracks 05–06
Tuesday, October 13
OPT 44–48
How could debt turn trade into a way of taking land?
Finish Chapter 2.
Read with the taskAudio tracks 07
Bring to your notebook: a brief gist, one useful detail with its OPT page, and a question you want to resolve.
Understand
Build the organizer before opening a model.
Paragraph 1
What happened?
Sequence the events. Connect Ireland with an American case; name people, places, and changes.
Paragraph 2
What were they thinking?
Infer a motive or belief from evidence. Distinguish what people claimed from the interests their actions served.
Paragraph 3
Why then and there?
Explain the conditions that made this action possible at this time and place. Show the causal connection.
Paragraph 4
What do we think of that?
Make a judgment and state the standard behind it. Address who benefited, who was harmed, and why that matters.
Try first: Put one sentence and one supporting detail under each question. Then use the supports to repair a gap.
Use the four assigned words
narrativize
Turn events into a connected story.
Use it in a sentence
We narrativize the events by connecting the English campaign in Ireland with later actions in America.
narrative + -ize: make into a narrative
Related Spanish word: narrar
motive
A reason that leads someone to act.
Use it in a sentence
The desire for profitable tobacco land was one motive for colonial expansion.
mot: move; a motive moves someone to act
Spanish cognate: motivo
ethics
Standards used to judge right and wrong.
Use it in a sentence
Our ethics should consider the rights of people whose land was taken.
ethical: an adjective for questions of right and wrong
Spanish cognate: ética
judgment
A conclusion reached by weighing evidence against a standard.
Use it in a sentence
My judgment rests on the principle that profit does not justify dispossession.
judge + -ment: the act or result of judging
Spanish meaning: juicio
Recall before you look
From memory, connect Ireland to one American case. What idea or practice carried over? Name an actor or action, then explain whose interests the connection served. Use motive accurately. Leave a blank rather than invent a detail.
Reopen OPT 30–31. Correct one detail and add one supporting example in a different color. Then cover your correction and explain the connection again.
Check OPT 30–31Compare two cases
Make two columns: Ireland and one American case. In each, record the interest, the justification, the action, and the consequence. Write one sentence explaining a similarity and one explaining a meaningful difference.
Write
Make each piece of evidence do something in your explanation.
Write four connected paragraphs in the order above. Include two exact OPT quotations, explain what each says and shows, and finish with what the method reveals beyond a timeline.
- Four assigned words 2 pointsUse narrativize, motive, ethics, and judgment meaningfully in sentences. Help with words
- Two appositives 2 pointsAdd two noun phrases that rename a noun. Check the equals rule. Help with appositives
- Two explained OPT quotations 2 pointsCopy exactly, cite the OPT page, and explain what each quotation says and shows. Help with quotes
- One explained Key Idea 2 pointsName a course idea and explain how this particular history demonstrates it. Help with Key Ideas
- An argument that develops 2 pointsConnect your reasoning across the four questions. Explain why each point matters. Help with development
Study an example after your first attempt
What happened? To narrativize this history, we need to connect English campaigns in Ireland with later actions in America. John Mason, an English military commander, fought in Ireland before campaigning against the Pequots. Descriptions of supposedly inferior peoples traveled with the colonizers. In Virginia, tobacco exports increased the demand for Native land; in New England, settlers competed with Native communities for farmland.
What were they thinking? A major motive was control of valuable land. Colonizers also used claims about “savagery” to justify taking it. Takaki writes, “Contrary to the stereotype of Indians as hunters and therefore savages, these Indians were farmers” (OPT 39). The sentence says that Native communities practiced agriculture. It shows why a claim that they left land unused was misleading. Ideas are weapons: a description of a people could help justify dispossessing them.
Why then and there? The growing tobacco market and increasing settler population made land more desirable, while epidemics weakened many Native communities. Later, Thomas Jefferson, the president of the United States, promoted a further mechanism: trade and debt. His proposal welcomed influential Native people who would “run in debt” (OPT 47). He expected debts they could not repay to lead to land cessions. This shows how economic policy could create pressure behind a supposedly voluntary sale.
What do we think of that? My judgment is that profit cannot justify taking another people’s land through violence or deliberately created pressure. This conclusion uses an ethics of equal rights and meaningful consent. The Four Question Method makes the history more than a timeline: it connects actions to motives, explains the conditions that made them possible, and makes the standard behind a judgment explicit.
Example response. Compare its reasoning with your own; choose and explain evidence that supports your answer.
Practice explaining evidence
Before opening the model, explain why Native farming matters to an argument about land taking.
1 · Study an explained example
“Contrary to the stereotype of Indians as hunters and therefore savages, these Indians were farmers.” (OPT 39).
What it says: Takaki says that Native communities practiced agriculture, contradicting an image that reduced their way of life to hunting.
What it shows: That contradiction matters because colonists justified taking land by describing it as unused. The claim could make dispossession appear justified even though the chapter documents Native farms.
Key Idea: This illustrates Ideas are weapons: a description of a people can help justify an action against them. The economic desire for farmland and the justification for taking it worked together.
Explain the model: Which sentence explains the evidence’s meaning? Which sentence connects it to land taking? What would be missing if the writer stopped after the quotation?
Unpack the sentence: Notice a contrast before the main claim
Read the OPT 39 sentence in the evidence example. Notice the contrast before the main claim.
- Opening contrast
- The opening phrase tells us the main statement will challenge a stereotype.
- Who the main clause is about
- The subject points back to the Native communities described in the preceding agricultural evidence.
- Main claim
- The linking verb connects those communities to the description farmers.
- The stereotype, not Takaki’s conclusion
- The description of hunters as savages sits inside the belief being challenged. Do not attribute that belief to the historian.
Try without help: In one sentence, explain the difference between the belief Takaki reports and the conclusion he supports.
2 · Complete the reasoning
Use the same evidence above. Cover the model’s explanation and complete two moves in your own words.
- What the evidence says: ______
- Why that matters to the justification for taking land: ______
Check the explanation
A strong explanation names the contradiction and connects it to a specific action. Merely writing that the quote proves Ideas are weapons leaves the mechanism unexplained.
3 · Try it independently
Read OPT 47. Select a short quotation from Jefferson’s debt proposal and explain what it says and what it reveals about land transfers. Write without the sentence prompts, then compare your reasoning with the two moves above.
Does your explanation identify how debt creates pressure? Does it explain the evidence rather than repeat it?
Check
Use a mistake or missing criterion to choose your next action.
Check your draft, then improve one part
Close the loop: Choose one unchecked criterion, use its help, and revise your writing. Reread the revised passage to check whether it now does the job.
Check the chapterQuarter 1 test · October 15
All of OPT Chapter 2 and Quarter 1 Words of the Day. The assigned Q1 Challenge Blooket is in Google Classroom. Sign in with your student ID.
Open Google ClassroomTurn in your work: Use the submission directions on your assigned packet or Classroom post. Checking boxes here does not submit work.
Additional chapter support and earlier practice
These reference guides retain the chapter’s earlier aims, YPT evidence, organizers, and quiz practice. For the current assignment, use the OPT directions above.