Curated OER
Rethinking Perpetrators, Bystanders and Rescuers: The Case of Max Schmeling
The focus of this lesson is personal choice and how changing circumstances can affect one person's ethical choices. During the Holocaust, people made choices, and by placing individuals in the appropriate historical context students can...
Curated OER
Novel Ideas: History of the American Novel
Explore the history of the American novel in the contexts of literature and US history. How does a novel or piece of writing from a particular time showcase the mood during that historical period? After conducting research and discussing...
Curated OER
The Journey to Civil Rights
Students explore several significant figures and events of the Civil Rights Movement and sequence the key events to create a timeline. The instructional activity utilizes the story, "The Story of Ruby Bridges," the work of Robert Coles...
Curated OER
Understanding Artifacts
Young scholars will develop a greater awareness of the things surrounding them and will be able to build a bridge between their own material culture and that of an imaginary figure from the past. This lesson focuses on the significance...
Curated OER
American Idols
Learners design a biographical web for a famous American figure. They identify key research questions and organize information as a prewriting strategy. This can be done individually or as a class, depending on your needs and students.
Curated OER
Women's History
Students research famous women in history. In this Women's History month instructional activity, students choose one historical woman to research and use biographies and websites to gather information. Students complete an included...
Curated OER
Key Figures of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition
Pupils gain general knowledge of the goals, route, participants, and significance of the 1899 Harriman Expedition. They link names of glaciers, fiords, mountains, flora and fauna with names of the 1899 Harriman Expedition participants. ...
National Endowment for the Humanities
“Read All About It”: Primary Source Reading in “Chronicling America”
Can investigative journalism become too sensationalistic and accusatory, or is it vital for the survival of a democracy? Middle schoolers analyze primary source documents from early 20th-century newspapers as well as Theodore Roosevelt's...
University of North Carolina
Oral History
There's no better way to learn something than to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. A handout on oral history, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, explains how to conduct interviews and use the information...
Curated OER
Letters from the Frontier: Reading and Writing Primary Documents
Learners examine historical documents about George Caitlin to derive meaning about his life and contributions. The lesson is multicultural and helps students to appreciate art and history.
Curated OER
WHERE ARE THE FAMOUS WOMEN IN HISTORY?
Students list/compare the number of men in history they can think of to the number of famous women. They discuss why there are more men than women on the list. They examine their textbooks for the same comparison and discuss the results.
Curated OER
Heroes Or Role Models?
Students recognize that "heroes" and "role models" are not synonymous terms. By analyzing heroes of other cultures and periods, they determine that many heroic figures, mythic or historical, rather than providing a model of a societal...
Curated OER
American Foreign Policy Since World War II (The Cold War)
High schoolers identify and interpret some key figures and major events during the Cold War era, including the Korean War, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the United States and China Cold War Relations. They...
Curated OER
The American Revolution and Its Heroes
Students, through a variety of activities, discover historical aspects of the American Revolution. They make maps and create timelines to track significant events. They create a book about the American Revolution and re-enact Paul...
Curated OER
A Hero Biography Project
Fourth graders study historical significant people born in January and February and note their accomplishments. Using given websites, 4th graders collect biographical information and participate in activities about a specified hero. ...
Curated OER
Wars and Conflicts
Students explore the concepts of war and conflict. In this research skills lesson, students use Internet and print sources to research the causes, effects, main events, and significant figures of selected wars.
Mathematics Vision Project
Circles: A Geometric Perspective
Circles are the foundation of many geometric concepts and extensions - a point that is thoroughly driven home in this extensive unit. Fundamental properties of circles are investigated (including sector area, angle measure, and...
Curated OER
Fidel Castro: El Comandante
Students view a documentary on Fidel Castro. After nearly forty years of rule, he remains one of the most controversial political figures of the twentieth century. After viewing, students discuss what they saw and research the Cuban...
Curated OER
White Southerners' Defense of Slaveholding
Students read transcriptions of articles from two historical Virginian newspapers and examine how white southerners defended the institution of slavery. They write a one-act play or a dialogue between an abolitionist and a slaveholder.
Curated OER
The Fog of War
Students view the film Fog of War and discuss the most striking elements of the film. They focus on chosen lessons from robert McNamara's life such as: empathy, rationality and proportionality.
Curated OER
It's About Time
In collaborative teams, students create individual autobiographical presentations that help them investigate their historical background. As they collaborate and create their projects they discuss and come to realize how current...
Curated OER
Civil War Trading Cards
Students research important figures in the American Civil War. In this research skills lesson, students create trading cards about selected key figures in the war that list details about the figures and their accomplishments.
Curated OER
People, Places and Environments
Middle schoolers predict a future for Gary, IN and US Steel Works. They explain how their own town would change if US Steel built this large of a facility in it and discuss why or shy not their town would have been an alternative to...
Curated OER
Digging Up Facts
Pupils research a historical legend. They participate in a discussion of the legend of Kissing Kate Barlow in the novel Holes. Students then chose one of three American legends and use internet research to complete a provided graphic...