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Lesson Plan

The Declaration of Independence

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

View the Declaration in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here and here . For additional primary resources click here and here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based...

Lesson Plan

The New Deal: Legislation & Policies

9, 10, 11, 12

Historical Background When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, American citizens faced economic challenges unlike anything previously experienced in U.S. history. By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President in 1933...

Lesson Plan

Rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan

9, 10, 11, 12

Historical Background As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks particularly, coupled with the impact of mechanization on...

Lesson Plan

Success and the American Dream during the 1950s

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Question How did conformity apply as a value to the living and working choices of Americans during the 1950s? How did the notion of success during the 1950’s relate to the "American Dream"? Materials Death of a Salesman by...

Lesson Plan

Students’ Constitutional Rights in Public School

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Question When may the rights of students in school be restricted? Materials Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, 1969 , Boston College New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985 , Legal Information Institute, Cornell University...

Lesson Plan

The Role of Women in the 1950s

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Question What roles were women expected to play during the 1950s? Materials Questions for The Feminine Mystique (PDF) Four Photos of Women , ProQuest K–12 "Housewife or Career Woman: The Changing Roles of Women in WWII and...

Lesson Plan

Ronald Reagan on Reducing the Size of Government

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Questions How can the powers of government be divided to best run our nation in this modern era? What role should the federal government play in shaping our economy? Document Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Message,...

Lesson Plan

Dwight D. Eisenhower's Domestic Leadership

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Questions What constitutes great presidential leadership? How did Eisenhower demonstrate great leadership through his support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) and his warning about the growth of the Military-Industrial...

Lesson Plan

Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Questions What impact did "the Moral Majority" have on American culture and politics in the 1980s? What are the differences between primary and secondary sources? Materials Excerpt from Listen America by Jerry Falwell (1980)...

Lesson Plan

Mass Production, Suburbia & Conformity in the 1950s

Economics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Essential Question How did conformity apply as a value to the living choices of Americans during the 1950’s? Materials Postwar Society Data and Questions (PDF) Little Boxes , written by Malvina Reynolds (1962) (Lyrics) Two Photos &amp...

Lesson Plan

The Treaty of Tordesillas: Resolving "a Certain Controversy" over Land in the Americas

Foreign Languages, Geography, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Background Imperial rivalries have often been resolved through war; however, the Treaty of Tordesillas is an important example of a rivalry that was resolved without hostilities through the demarcation of areas of influence by the...

Lesson Plan

Early European Imperial Colonization of the New World

World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Introduction By the early to mid-seventeenth century, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands were all competing for colonies and trade around the world. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, explorers, conquerors, missionaries...

Lesson Plan

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address

Economics, Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

View this item in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize...

Lesson Plan

Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Unit Overview This unit is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Teaching Literacy through History resources, designed to align to the Common Core State Standards. These units were developed to enable students to understand,...

Classroom Resources

Study Aid: The Bill of Rights

5, 6, 7, 8, 9

The Bill of Rights First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people...

Classroom Resources

Study Aid: Checks and Balances

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Checks and Balances Executive Branch carries out the laws can veto laws can call special sessions of Congress controls enforcement of laws nominates judges can pardon people convicted of federal crimes commander in chief develops...

Lesson Plan

The Cold War: Discussing the Speech of President Kennedy in 1963

Government and Civics, Literature, World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Introduction The Cold War is the term for the rivalry between the two blocs of contending states that emerged following the Second World War. It was a series of confrontations played out on the world stage between the non-Communist...

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Lincoln on abolition in England and the United States, 1858

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Though Lincoln spoke frequently during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas—a campaign that propelled Lincoln to the political forefront and helped shape him into a presidential candidate—very few Lincoln manuscripts...

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Lincoln speech on slavery and the American Dream, 1858

Economics, Government and Civics

Through the 1830s and 1840s, Abraham Lincoln’s primary political focus was on economic issues. However, the escalating debate over slavery in the 1850s, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in particular, compelled Lincoln to change his...

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The state of the English colonies, 1755

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War, was primarily fought along the frontier between New France and the British colonies in North America from 1754 to 1763. This newspaper article, printed in the Maryland...

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The horrors of slavery, 1805

Originally circulated in 1805 to educate the public about the treatment of slaves, this broadside, entitled "Injured Humanity," continues to inform twenty-first-century audiences of the true horrors of slavery. As evidenced by this...

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Slavery in the New York State census, 1800

Government and Civics

While numbers do not explain the everyday realities of slavery in the eighteenth century, they do provide a sense of the pervasiveness of the peculiar institution even in a northern state like New York. This broadside provides figures...

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The massacre of American Indian allies, 1818

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On April 23, 1818, Captain Obed Wright of the Georgia militia ordered an attack on a Chehaw village, which resulted in the slaughter of several American Indians. In a letter written a week after the attack, Brigadier General Thomas...

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The Civil War and early submarine warfare, 1863

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Civil War combat foreshadowed modern warfare with the introduction of the machine gun, repeater rifles, and trench warfare, and the use of trains to quickly move troops. However, one of the most celebrated tactical innovations of the...

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Amelia Earhart to her former flight instructor, Neta Snook, 1929

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

The first decades of the twentieth century brought a golden age of aviation. During this exciting period, many pioneering women defied traditional female roles to become pilots. Amelia Earhart is the most famous of this group of...

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Sergeant Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts on equal pay for Black soldiers, 1864

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Francis H. Fletcher, a 22-year-old clerk from Salem, Massachusetts, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on February 13, 1863. One year after the regiment left Boston with great fanfare,...

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George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy, 1783

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In March of 1783, George Washington faced a serious threat to his authority and to the civil government of the new nation. The Continental Army, based in Newburgh, New York, was awaiting word of peace negotiations between Great...

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The Great West Illustrated, 1869

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

The exploration and settlement of the American West coincided with the development of the medium of photography. Photographic images, reproduced in books and newspapers and available for purchase on their own, helped shape Americans’...

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A northerner’s view of southern slavery, 1821

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Aurelia Hale of Hartford, Connecticut, offered her impressions of southern life in this letter of June 11, 1821. Hale, then about twenty-two years old, had recently traveled to Washington County, Georgia, to serve as a schoolteacher....

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Indenture agreement, 1742

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...

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A Ku Klux Klan threat, 1868

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This page contains language that may be offensive or inappropriate for some viewers. Reconstruction politics was a catalyst for widespread racism and hatred that freed people experienced throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan, founded...

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My Country, ’Tis of Thee

Samuel Francis Smith was a twenty-four-year-old Baptist seminary student in Massachusetts when he wrote the lyrics of "America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee)," the patriotic song that would serve as an unofficial national anthem for...

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A Founding Father on the Missouri Compromise, 1819

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues—slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had been silent on slavery. That silence was...

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A soldier’s reasons for enlisting, 1942

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Our country is the entire world and mankind our countrymen!!!" In April of 1942, Sidney Diamond, a chemical engineering student at City College in New York, enlisted in the United States Army against the wishes of his friends and...

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Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow, 1887

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Frederick Douglass tirelessly labored to end slavery but true equality remained out of reach. Despite the successful passage of several Constitutional amendments and federal laws after the Civil War, unwritten rules and Jim Crow laws...

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Suffragists invoke Lincoln, 1910

Government and Civics

In 1910 Washington State voted to approve full woman suffrage, a vote that was influenced by publications and posters such as this one. This poster, declaring that "Lincoln said women should vote," invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln...

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John Philip Sousa critiques modern music, 1930

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), an American composer of classical music, served as the director of the United States Marine Band from 1880 to 1892. During Sousa’s time as leader of "The President’s Own," as the band was called, he...

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"America the Beautiful," 1893

In a brief essay that appeared ca. 1925, poet Katharine Lee Bates described her inspiration for writing "America the Beautiful," the poem that would evolve into one of the nation’s best-loved patriotic songs, during a trip to Pike’s...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Slavery and Abolition

World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American Revolution Introduction The campaign to end slavery was a prolonged struggle. In England and in America in the eighteenth century, some authors such as Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson...

Classroom Resources

Breaking from Great Britain, 1776

World History

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American Revolution By 1776, Thomas Paine had become the most influential writer defending the break from Great Britain. Born in England, Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774, at age 34. His...

Lesson Plan

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Overview In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience while startling many others who preferred the music of Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in...

Lesson Plan

American Music Goes to War

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Entertainment is always a national asset. Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in wartime. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943 Background Music during World War II had an unprecedented impact on America, both on the home front...

Lesson Plan

Sounds of Change: The Influence of Jazz on the Beat Generation

9, 10, 11, 12

Time Needed Two class sessions Common Core Standards Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning...

Classroom Resources

Statistics: Immigration in America, Ku Klux Klan membership: 1915-1940s

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The following charts are presented in the book The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 by Kenneth T. Jackson. The first chart represents the states with the highest recorded membership in the Klan during this time period. The...

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A patriot’s letter to his loyalist father, 1778

In February 1778, Timothy Pickering Jr. received word from Massachusetts that his father was dying. An adjutant general in George Washington’s Continental Army, Pickering wrote his father this moving letter of farewell on February 23,...

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"The whole land is full of blood," 1851

"The whole land is full of blood." These ominous words were uttered by James W. C. Pennington, a former slave and noted abolitionist, in the wake of Thomas Sims’s infamous trial. Sims had escaped from slavery in Georgia before being...

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Union soldier turns medic at Gettysburg, 1863

After three days of fierce fighting on July 1–3, 1863, nearly 40,000 battered soldiers lay scattered across the blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. As the torrential summer rain poured down on the wounded, Private Elbert...

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African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863

On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...

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American Colonization Society membership certificate, 1833

When James Madison signed this membership certificate as president of the American Colonization Society in 1833, the organization’s effort to repatriate America’s free black population to Africa had been underway for over a decade. On...

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A secret agreement between pirate hunters, 1696

World History

Maritime trade and exploration in the colonial era created an environment ripe for piracy. One of the most famous pirates in history, Captain William Kidd, was commissioned by William III of England in 1695 as a privateer to hunt and...

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