Materials provided by The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located in New York City, offer researchers an opportunity to examine primary sources and use these sources to understand the past. Class groups analyze different documents to...

Walk in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark as they discover the wonders, beauty, and dangers of the American frontier. After gaining background knowledge about Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, young explorers use primary...

What did Jo write her stories with? How did the March sisters dress? A primary source set designed for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women prompts learners to look over images of household items and clothes from the 1860s before...

What was life like for women in Colonial America? What restrictions were placed upon them and what opportunities were they afforded? A case study of Elizabeth Murray offers high schoolers a chance to investigate primary source...

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is a literary masterpiece as well as a timestamp of the formative mid-nineteenth century in America. Using a primary source set of photographs, letters, and portraits, readers discuss the ways...

Introduce a study of the presidency of Andrew Jackson with a lesson that uses video clips, primary source documents, group activities, and debates to examine Jackson's early life and career. The lesson focuses on the 1828 election and...

The struggles of Sam McCulloch, a free black man, to be recognized as a citizen entitled to own land in Texas are the focus of research project that ask groups to examine a series of primary source documents and piece together...

To better understand the Indian Removal Act of 1830, class members examine primary source documents including letters written by Alabama governors and the Cherokee chiefs. The lesson is part of a unit on the expansion of the United...

While many have heard of Harriet Tubman, few are aware of the many ways this remarkable woman was involved in the United States Civil War, the abolitionist movement, and the Underground Railroad. Young historians examine primary source...

Scholars find out how primary and secondary sources help us learn the past. Beginning with an anchor chart, class members discuss and write the differences between primary and secondary sources; a card sort is added to the anchor chart...

Information, inferences, and innuendos. Text and subtext. Class members examine telegrams exchanged between President John F. Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace, studying both what is stated and what is implied by the...

High schoolers are have begun to learn  the art of diplomacy with each other, but do they understand how diplomacy works at a global level?  The second in a series of four lessons, guides scholars in evaluating primary sources....

The European Recovery Act (aka the Marshall Plan) was designed to bring together and develop a spirit of cooperation among European nations after World War II. Class members examine the materials from the Marshall Plan exhibit and assess...

To broaden their understanding of both the short term and long terms effects of the Civil War, class groups examine primary source materials and then assume the role of a family member and draft a letter to a soldier describing life at...

Do the ends justify the means? Getting a drug approved in the US is a long and involved process. But at some point out, it involves testing on humans. The ethics of such testing is the focus of a resource that uses Dr. Albert...

Trailblazers forge the path into uncharted territory, they establish a precedent for others to follow. Young historians research trailblazers in Congress using primary and secondary sources to profile outliers that changed the face of...

The tenant farming and sharecropping systems that developed in the South after the Civil War, the reasons for their development, and the eventual decline of these systems are the focus of this two-day plan.

Being a historian requires serious sleuthing. They examine primary source documents and look for evidence, for clues that reveal who wrote the document, when, and why. After watching two historians model the process, young history...

David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 1776, is the focus of a 28-page teacher's guide. The guide includes pre-reading questions, background information about key British and American figures, and chapter-by-chapter lessons.

Suffragette, investigative journalist, and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells is the focus of a lesson that has young historians study the work of this amazing woman. Scholars watch a video biography of Wells, read the text of her speech...

Scholars learn how the judicial system treated under-age Civil War soldiers using historical analysis. The resource uses court documents to help historians understand why Habeas Corpus was used in the case of Alfred Sinker and why he was...

From December 20, 1860 to June 8, 1861, eleven states seceded from the Union. Alabama seceded on January 11, 1861. Why did so many white Alabamians want to secede? Why did they believe the South could win the war? These are the essential...

Designed as a supplement to the study of the Freedom Riders, this resource uses primary sources to reveal the views of those who opposed the Freedom Riders. After careful study of the arguments presented by the members of the Montgomery...

Students draw conclusions from primary sources and share information and interpretations with a small group. They are introduced to the Jigsaw technique. Students discuss why a grocery receipt would be a primary source. They...