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Lesson Plan

Back in 1734

K, 1, 2, 3

Introduction Present the following scenario to your students. You can either read it to them or enlist students to act it out. The scenario is about two children who lived in 1734 and were the age of your students. "Anna Elizabeth and...

Lesson Plan

Our New Country Needs New Money: Colonial Money Simulation

Economics

K, 1, 2, 3

There certainly can’t be a greater Grievance to a Traveler, from one Colony to another than the different values their Paper Money bears. —an English visitor, ca.1742 Introduction Students use different kinds of paper money to...

Classroom Resources

Infographic: Reform Movements of the Progressive Era

Economics, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12

View this infographic as a PDF.

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: "Birth of a Nation"

Art, Geography, Government and Civics, Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1915, fifty years after the end of the Civil War, D. W. Griffith released his epic film Birth of a Nation. The greatest blockbuster of the silent era, Birth of a Nation was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946. Based...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Black Soldiers in the Civil War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By early 1863, voluntary enlistments in the Union army had fallen so sharply that the federal government instituted an unpopular military draft and decided to enroll Black as well as White troops. Indeed, it seems likely that it was...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Go West ... and Grow Up with the Country

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," said Greeley. Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Immigration Policy in World War II

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt suspended naturalization proceedings for Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants, required them to register, restricted their mobility, and prohibited them from owning...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Life on the Trail

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Each spring, pioneers gathered at Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, to begin a 2,000 mile journey westward. For many families, the great spur for emigration was economic: the financial depression of the...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Post-World War I Labor Tensions

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The years following the end of World War I were a period of deep social tensions, aggrevated by high wartime inflation. Food prices more than doubled between 1915 and 1920; clothing costs more than tripled. A steel strike that began...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Slavery in a Capitalist World

Economics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Why were the South's political leaders so worried about whether slavery would be permitted in the West when geography and climate made it unlikely that slavery would ever prosper in the area? The answer lies in the South's growing...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Breakdown of the Party System

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As late as 1850, the two-party system seemed healthy. Democrats and Whigs drew strength in all parts of the country. Then, in the early 1850s, the two-party system began to disintegrate in response to massive foreign immigration. By...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Confederacy Begins to Collapse

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By early 1863, the Civil War had begun to cause severe hardship on the southern home front. Not only was most of the fighting taking place in the South, but also as the Union blockade grew more effective and the South's railroad...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the US Constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, said that the Constitution was "defective from the start." He pointed out that the framers...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Economics of Slavery

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Like other slave societies, the South did not produce urban centers on a scale equal with those in the North. Virginia's largest city, Richmond, had a population of just 15,274 in 1850. That same year, Wilmington, North Carolina's...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The First National Census

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Early in August 1790, David Howe, an assistant federal marshal, began the difficult task of counting all the people who lived in Hancock County, Maine. One of 650 federal census takers, charged with making "a...perfect enumeration.....

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Human Meaning of Migration

World History

13+

For more than two centuries novelists and autobiographers have explored the human meaning of migration. In hundreds of stories, novels, and autobiographies, these writers have examined what it means to be uprooted, voluntarily or...

Classroom Resources

Study Aid: The Language of Cultural Mixture and Persistence

World History

9, 10, 11, 12

The study of migration encourages us to think about the process of cultural adjustment and adaptation that takes place after migrants move from one environment to another. In the early twentieth century, Americans commonly thought of...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Survival of the US Constitution

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The United States has the oldest written national framework of government in the world. At the end of the twentieth century, there were about 159 other national constitutions in the world, and 101 had been adopted since 1970. While...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Post-World War I Red Scare

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The end of World War I was accompanied by a panic over political radicalism. Fear of bombs, Communism, and labor unrest produced a “Red Scare.” In Hammond, Indiana, a jury took two minutes to acquit the killer of an immigrant who had...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Why Do People Migrate?

Economics, World History

13+

In trying to understand why people migrate, some scholars emphasize individual decision-making, while others stress broader structural forces. Many early scholars of migration emphasized the importance of "push" and "pull" factors....

Essay

Revolutionary in America

Art, Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The image is so clear in our minds, seen first in elementary school and reinforced countless times since: a few dozen gentlemen with powdered wigs and period suits (coats, waistcoats, and knee-length breeches) gathered in a large...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Jacksonian Democracy

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1: The aristocracy of our country . . . continually contrive to change their party name. It was first Tory, then Federalist, then no party . . . then National Republican, now Whig. . . . But by whatever name they reorganize...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Indian Removal

Geography, Government and Civics

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

Reading 1 Toward the aborigines of this country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. Humanity...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Political Battles of the Jacksonian Era: The Bank War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1: It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Political Battles of the Jacksonian Era: Nullification

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1: And, sir, let it be remembered that a revenue system, grossly and palpably unequal in itself--a system which, under the most favorable modification, would levy the entire amount of the federal taxes from one-fifth part of...

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