Celebration or protest song? The full text of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" opens a study of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Louisiana Purchase, and Western Expansion from various perspectives. Middle schoolers examine...

After a lecture about how the first industrial revolution triggered the path to climate change, your environmental studies class discusses what the impacts are. In a culminating activity, they get into groups and identify countries on a...

A couple PowerPoint presentations are used to stimulate discussion about the perspectives of different countries on the issue of energy consumption. Afterward, they play a game in which each team is assigned a country, considers its...

Confederate soldiers saw the Civil War much differently than their Union counterparts. Scholars analyze the perspective of the Civil War from the viewpoint of various key figures in the fourth installment of an eight-part series. By...

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

Using primary and secondary sources, such as letters and diaries from soldiers and civilians, learners consider why people fought in the American Civil War. A role-playing Historical Mingle activity, as well as discussion questions and...

The only way that a heinous act of genocide can succeed is if citizens of surrounding groups and countries turn their backs on those suffering. A thorough language arts module addresses shared central ideas with three separate units,...

Historical events can be viewed from multiple perspectives. This simple truth is brought home in a lesson that examines primary source documents related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny,...

Was the Scopes trial more complicated than a simple debate between evolutionists and creationists? As part of a structured academic controversy (SAC) activity, pupils consider multiple perspectives of the Butler Act and engage in close...

Spoken word poetry, more than almost any other form, reveals the historical and cultural perspective of the poet. High schoolers listen to various spoken word poems, select one to research in-depth, and then apply what they have learned...

An interactive provides readers with an opportunity to record their reactions to Beloved, Toni Morrison's powerful narrative based on the life of Margaret Garner. Prompts ask them to consider how the shifting point of view contributes to...

After analyzing newspaper articles portraying different perspectives of the explosion of the Battleship USS Maine, your young historians will take a stand on which position is the most believable in both discussion and writing.

Suffragettes, suffragists, and anti-suffragists. A two-day, richly detailed lesson plan has young historians investigate the twentieth-century suffrage movement. Groups examine primary and secondary source materials about Jane Addams and...

To understand how personal perspectives can affect policy and politics, scholars examine the woman suffrage media map and historical artifacts to analyze arguments for and against women's suffrage. Class members then take on the role of...

To further their understanding of the basis of the conflicts between the Pocumtucks and the English settlers, class members research the religious beliefs and attitudes of the Puritan farmers that settled in Deerfield, Ma.

Show students that every vote counts as they debate the federal government 's role in protecting voting rights in historically racially discriminated areas. In the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, the high court found...

How can evidence and perspective challenge even the most well-known of stories? Through primary and secondary source analysis, think-alouds, and discussion, young historians evaluate the historical narrative of Rosa Parks across multiple...

Christopher Columbus: hero or villain? Prepare class members for the debate with activities that asks them to think critically about how history is reported.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "What is history but a fable agreed upon?" A series of lessons encourages learners to look beyond the basic fable agreed upon related to events in history and consider multiple accounts of the event....

The Boston Massacre is the focus of a lesson that explores primary sources. Scholars examine two primary source images and discuss the different perspectives on the historical event. After groups read a researched account, they perform a...

Once Americans won the Revolutionary War, their quest to gain land did not end. An interesting activity focuses on Americans' expansion into the frontier following the war and how it conflicted with Native Americans living in the area....

How did the United States respond to the Holocaust refugee crisis during World War II? The activity focuses on the United States' foreign policies and the arguments for and against offering assistance. Scholars analyze historical...

Good primary resources, offering different perspectives on important issues and events, are hard to find. A packet of 12 primary source images, videos, audio recordings, records, and newspaper articles related to the 1960s civil rights...

The importance of considering multiple perspectives of the same event is the big idea in this exercise that focuses on the Boston Massacre. Class groups examine photos of four depictions of the massacre, an English and an American...