Book excerpt: Comprehensive Common Core curriculum for United States History, Grades K-2 The Alexandria Plan is Common Core's curriculum tool for the teaching of United States and World History. It is a strategic framework for identifying and using high quality informational texts and narrative nonfiction to meet the expectations of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) while also sharing essential historical knowledge drawn from the very best state history and civics standards from around the country. The curriculum is presented in this four volume series: Common Core Curriculum: United States History, Grades K-2; Common Core Curriculum: World History, Grades K-2; Common Core Curriculum: United States History, Grades 3-5; and Common Core Curriculum: World History, Grades 3-5. Features of each book include: Learning Expectations, which articulate the key ideas, events, facts, and figures to be understood by students in a particular grade span. Suggested anchor texts for each topic. In depth text studies, comprised of text-dependent questions, student responses, and assessments based on a featured anchor text. Select additional resources. Concise Era Summaries that orient both teachers and students to the historical background. The curriculum helps teachers pose questions about texts covering a wide range of topics. This volume, Common Core Curriculum: United States History, Grades K-2, introduces lower elementary students to 18 key eras in our country's history, from the original Native American people to modern times, through stories that they will treasure forever.