64 items
Overview Students will examine posters and broadsides from the 1800s to examine attitudes about slavery in the United States at that time. Materials Overhead or copies for all students of the poster packet (PDF) Poster Inquiry Sheet...
Immigration in the Gilded Age: Using Photographs as Primary Sources
Aim / Essential Question How successful were photographs in demonstrating the conditions of immigrants during the Gilded Age? Background The latter portion of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century witnessed the start...
The First Thanksgiving Celebration
Learning Objectives Students will use literature to gain insight into the lives of the Wampanoag people and their participation in the first Thanksgiving celebration. Students will present information on different aspects of the...
Singing for Freedom
Background In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with most non-white families living well below the poverty line. Although African Americans made up nearly half of the state's population, few were...
June 25, 1876: An Interpretation of an Historical Event
Essential Question How should events from the Indian Wars be commemorated by the federal government? Background The Battle of Little Bighorn was one in a series of conflicts that occurred during the American attempt to remove native...
Native American Policy
Background: Two conflicting policies have governed this country’s treatment of Native Americans—assimilation and removal. As the United States expanded, it became necessary to issue formal policy statements and make treaties with...
George Pullman: His Impact on the Railroad Industry, Labor, and American Life in the Nineteenth Century
Background George Mortimer Pullman was an influential industrialist of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company. His innovations brought comfort and luxury to railroad travel in the 1800s with the...
Dashes and Dots: A Product of the Nineteenth Century
Overview Students will examine primary sources including letters, a patent, photos, and diagrams to identify and describe the technological invention and development of the telegraph that evolved during the nineteenth century....
Symbols of the 1920s: New York City Skyscrapers in Photographs and Paintings
Overview The roaring 1920s was an era of dramatic change. Among the most enduring manifestations of this change was the rise of the big city. The centrality of urban growth to the social, political, and economic changes of the 1920s...
Democracy in Early America: Servitude and the Treatment of Native Americans and Africans prior to 1740
Essential Questions How did European explorers and colonists who came to the New World for "Gold, Glory and/or God" justify their treatment of Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and indentured servants? To what extent were there...
Conflict and Captivity in the Colonies
Background The early seventeenth century was punctuated by a series of small wars between Native Americans and colonists. Many colonists were captured and taken prisoner, but two women, whose ordeals were published as books, stand out...
Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England
Background Wampanoags Much of what is known about early Wampanoag history comes from archaeological evidence, the Wampanoag oral tradition (much of which has been lost), and documents created by seventeenth-century English colonists....
Beyond Rosie the Riveter: Women's Contributions During World War II
Overview Although often understated, the social, economic, and political contributions of American women have all had profound effects on the course of this nation. For evidence of this, one needs to look no further than the many...
Theodore Roosevelt and the Trusts
Background Thick dark smoke billowing out of smokestacks several stories high proliferated across city skylines, heralding America's rise to world prominence and industrial supremacy. After the Civil War, Americans embraced the smog...
Colonists Divided: A Revolution and a Civil War
Background The Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act were just a few of the many policies Great Britain enacted in the British North American colonies in the eighteenth century. To many...
Perspectives on the Trail of Tears
Introduction In this lesson, student groups will design and create a poster containing facts about the Trail of Tears as well as a collage and concluding statement expressing the group’s feelings about the event. Background The Trail...
The Erie Canal and the Rise of the Market Economy
Objectives Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze effects of technology on economic growth in the first half of the nineteenth century. Students will be able to identify the major economic trends of...
The Battle over the Bank: Hamilton v. Jefferson
Background After months of battling and compromises, the US Constitution was finally sent to Congress by the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. Through the ratification process and the first decade under the new...
Banking Basics
Introduction Many elementary school students are unaware of how banks make money and what causes them to fail. This lesson will provide students with a basic understanding of those two issues, linking them to the Great Depression and...
New Amsterdam: The Center of the Dutch Settlement
Teaching with Russell Shorto’s book Island at the Center of the World Objectives Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze the effects of the Dutch West India Company settlement in North America....
The Conquest of Mexico: Past and Present Views
Introduction The conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortez in 1519 is one of the most well-known examples of encounters between Europeans and Americans prior to 1600. Some primary sources that document the event still exist, though...
The Great Depression and The New Deal
Essential Questions What should be the role of government in solving a national crisis? How effective were the responses of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to the problems of the Great Depression? Objectives Write a Document...
Events at Sand Creek, 1864
Historical Context When the Civil War broke out, John Milton Chivington, a missionary in Kansas, was offered a commission as a chaplain but refused it as he wanted to fight. As a result he was given a commission as a major in the 1st...
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