Activity
Read Works

Read Works: Adventure on a Hot Air Balloon

For Teachers 4th - 6th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] This first person account describes a hot air balloon trip. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies and establishes scaffolding for...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: A Small Life

For Teachers 1st - 3rd
[Free Registration/Login Required] This literary text passage shares the story of a hamster and its first person account of what it sees. This passage is to be read aloud and reinforces essential comprehension skills. Opportunities for...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: Portrait of an Artist

For Teachers 1st - 5th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] This nonfiction passage shares a first person account of an artist's life. This passage is intended for guided practice and is designed to reinforce essential reading comprehension skills.
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Maine Explosion

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. When the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, triggering the Spanish-American War, the New York Times and...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Reading Like a Historian: Intro to Historical Thinking: Lunchroom Fight

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] A fight breaks out in the lunchroom and the principal needs to figure out who started it. But when she asks witnesses what they saw, she hears conflicting accounts. Why might these accounts differ? As...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Snapshot Autobiography

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] What is history? And why do historical accounts differ? In this lesson, students create brief autobiographies and then reflect on the process to better understand how history is written. Exploring these...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Sharecropping

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] Learners solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry lesson allows students to critically evaluate their classroom textbook's account...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Homestead Strike

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry lesson allows students to use the historical thinking skills of corroboration,...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Pullman Strike

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read primary source documents to solve a problem surrounding a historical question. This document-based inquiry lesson allows students read parallel accounts of the Pullman Strike of 1894 from...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Battle of Lexington

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry lesson allows students to practice sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Shays' Rebellion

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read primary source documents to solve a problem surrounding a historical question. This document-based inquiry lesson allows students to gain a more nuanced understanding of how Americans...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Lewis and Clark

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] In this Structured Academic Controversy (SAC), students read four documents that give different accounts of how Lewis and Clark treated the Native Americans they met on their expedition. Students are...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Battle of Little Bighorn

For Teachers 9th - 10th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students solve a problem surrounding a historical question by reading primary source documents. This historical inquiry lesson allows students to explore causes of the Battle of Little Bighorn by...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: American Imperialism

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] The American Imperialism Unit covers the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. The lessons approach historical inquiry from different angles. One asks students to consider contrasting...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: u.s. Entry Into Wwi

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] In this historical inquiry lesson, learners address the question, "What changed between 1914 and 1917 that caused the U.S. to enter WWI?" to corroborate a textbook account with two documents: a speech...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: Nat Turner

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Nat Turner led the largest slave uprising the South would see until the Civil War. The infamy of the event has led to multiple interpretations of Turner as a historical figure. By sourcing and...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: John Brown

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students use primary source documents to investigate central historical questions. In this investigation, students must determine whether John Brown was a "misguided fanatic," by examining a speech by...
Lesson Plan
Stanford University

Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian: The Atomic Bomb

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] How necessary was it for the United States to drop the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in World War II? In this lesson, learners will study varying accounts and develop their own opinions of...
Unit Plan
CommonLit

Common Lit: A Participant's First Hand Account of the Boston Tea Party

For Students 9th - 10th
A learning module that begins with "A Participant's First-hand Account of the Boston Tea Party" by George Hewes, accompanied by guided reading questions, assessment questions, and discussion questions. The text can be printed as a PDF or...
Unit Plan
CommonLit

Common Lit: Themes: Fate & Free Will: Can We Control Our Fate?

For Students 9th - 10th
This is a collection of Grade-Leveled texts (3-12) to address the question, "Can we control our fate?" Select a grade level and a collection of on grade-level reading passages on the topic comes up. [Free account registration required...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: Eyewitness to History: I'm American No Matter What

For Teachers 4th - 6th
[Free Registration/Login Required] TThis passasge contains a first person account of a child who was rounded up and placed in a Japanese internment camp after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: American Government Jury Duty

For Teachers 4th
[Free Registration/Login Required] This first person account explains the topic of jury duty. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies and establishes scaffolding for...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: An Adventure in Africa

For Teachers 2nd - 4th
[Free Registration/Login Required] This fictional first person account shares the story of a child whose fears are overcome while experiencing a safari in Africa. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential...
Activity
Read Works

Read Works: Immigration Ellis Island: The Hunt for Alois Hanousek

For Teachers 4th
[Free Registration/Login Required] An autobiographical account of a family looking for information about their great-grandfather. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.