Lesson Plan Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, and Thanksgiving Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy, World History 3, 4, 5 Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
Lesson Plan The French and Indian War Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A report from Spanish California, 1776 Foreign Languages, Government and Civics Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
Lesson Plan Apprenticeship and Indentured Servitude: Contract Labor in the British Colonies 5, 6, 7, 8 Click here to download this three-lesson unit. About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Lesson Plan Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621 Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy, World History 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622 Economics, Geography 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The first English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, who arrived in 1607, were eager to find gold and silver. Instead they found sickness and disease. Eventually, these colonists learned how to survive in their new environment, and by...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The surrender of New Netherland, 1664 Geography 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The Dutch colonization of New Netherland (which included parts of present-day New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut) began in the 1620s. From the outset, New Netherland was a multiethnic, multireligious society: about half...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Late seventeenth-century map of the Northeast, 1682 Geography, World History 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Like many other explorers, Henry Hudson stumbled upon North America almost by accident. Employed by the Dutch Republic to find a sea passage to the Far East, Hudson and the crew of his ship the Halve Maen landed at what is today New...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Map of the New World, with European settlements and American Indian tribes, 1730 Geography 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ This map, "Recens edita totius Novi Belgii in America Septentrionali," depicts present-day New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Created by Dutch mapmakers in 1730, the map reflects the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Province of Massachusetts Bay requests aid from Queen Anne, 1708 Economics, Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713) was the second of four great wars for empire fought among France and England and their Indian allies. This struggle broke out when the French raided English settlements on the New England frontier....