About This Worksheet
This Grade 7 reading worksheet helps students compare bias and perspective in two historical accounts of westward expansion. The first account presents migration as a story of opportunity, growth, and national development. The second describes the same movement through the loss, displacement, and suffering experienced by Native American communities. For example, one passage calls expansion progress, while the other shows how that progress depended on taking land from people already living there.
Learning Goals
The main goal is to help students recognize that historical writing can emphasize very different experiences. Students should already know how to identify point of view and locate words that reveal an author’s attitude. This activity moves them toward comparing what each account includes, leaves out, and values most. It supports CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.6 and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.9, which ask students to analyze perspective and compare treatments of the same topic.
Student Tasks
On this worksheet, students will read two accounts of westward expansion in the 1800s. They will compare the tone, details, word choice, and experiences emphasized in each passage. Students must identify signs of bias and explain how each account shapes the reader’s understanding of the event. Their answers should use evidence from both texts and acknowledge that the same history affected groups very differently.
Common Challenges
Some students may assume that only the second passage has a perspective because it describes suffering more openly. Others may accept words such as “opportunity” and “growth” as completely neutral. Remind them that positive language can reveal bias just as clearly as negative language. A helpful question is, “Whose experience is centered, and whose experience is missing?”
Teaching Suggestions
A teacher can create a chart with columns for gains, losses, and words that reveal viewpoint. Students can fill in examples from both accounts before discussing the larger historical picture. At home, a parent can ask how the same event could feel hopeful to one group and devastating to another. This encourages careful comparison without reducing the topic to a simple right-or-wrong answer.
Worksheet Features
The worksheet places two sharply different historical perspectives side by side. Each passage includes clear details and language that reveal what the author wants readers to notice. The chart-based comparison supports organized thinking about bias, tone, and emphasis. This page works well for reading, history, source analysis, and lessons on multiple perspectives.