Students write creation stories and design stamps to use on banners accompany them. They discuss the use of stamps in African culture to take the place of words. Students use a handout of stamps and their own creations to create banners...

Third graders increase reading strategies while learning about Abigail Adams and her role in history. In this Abigail Adams lesson, 3rd graders read about the American Revolution and Abigail Adams using all the balanced literacy...

In this instructional activity, North Carolina Salt Dough Map, 4th graders create a salt dough map of North Carolina, Students use dough to form the shape of the state of North Carolina. Students label the three regions of North...

Students, in a high school class for autistic children, take a virtual tour of Boston's "Big Dig" and the artifacts discovered there. During weekly lab sessions, they discover the processes involved in artifact preservation. Using...

Students create family histories. In this book making instructional activity, students take digital cameras home for the night and take family members' photographs. Students use the photographs and text they write about their families to...

I love lessons like this because they let kids see the power of art, poetry, and activism in times of social injustice and unrest. They'll analyze the art used by Emory Douglas in the production of the Black Panther newspaper and...

What strategies are most effective in changing an unjust law? Class members examine the tactics used in the Birmingham Campaign of 1963 (Project C) to achieve social justice and social transformation. After examining documents that...

Read about the tumultuous beginning to the United States with an informational text passage about Colonial America. As young researchers peruse an article about the arrival of the Mayflower, the settlers' relationship to the neighboring...

The major pre-Columbian settlements are studied in this excellente social studies instructional activity. Fifth graders explain how geography and climate influenced the way various nations lived and adjusted to the environment, and focus...

A thorough set of activities, articles, and reference material can enlighten your class about the history of whaling in New England. Kids travel back to a time when whale products were valuable and hunting whales was a way to help the...

Whether it's an election year or not, a unit on voting patterns and political campaigns will awaken the civic pride in your high school citizens. Divided into six parts, the curriculum covers various facets of an election, including...

Hop into a covered wagon and follow Laura Ingalls Wilder through the Midwest. A series of lessons based on Little House on the Prairie encourages young pioneers to see the world through Laura's eyes as they map her...

Sojourner Truth is one of the most prominent faces of the abolitionist movement, but what was her life in slavery like? Learn more about her early years with a reading comprehension resource that provides a short passage from...

One photograph can represent so much more than the images on the film. Eighth graders select a photograph from the Civil War era and conduct additional research based on the subject matter from the picture. Once they complete the...

Fighting a war over home soil makes a living nightmare even more real. Class members describe the experience of a Civil War soldier during the Battle of Franklin, poised right at a major turning point of the war, after researching the...

Though often used in shows of patriotism, Bruce Springsteen's 1985 song "Born in the U.S.A." is critical of America's role in the Vietnam war and its treatment of American veterans. High schoolers analyze the song's lyrics in an activity...

Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorisms are a perfect time capsule of colonist values in the mid-18th century, as well as a clever reminder of the way life still works today. Middle and high schoolers select one aphorism to interpret...

Even for one of the most accomplished men in American history, there was room for improvement. Challenge high schoolers to use Benjamin Franklin's Project for Moral Perfection to analyze text, make inferences, connect to historical...

How much power should a president be allowed to exert? Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt exercised their power according to their interpretations of the United States Constitution, and these interpretations affected the...

The Battle of Fort Sumter was both the first and the least deadly battle of the American Civil War, with no soldiers lost during the lengthy bombardment. Learn more about the first shots of the Civil War with a short reading passage and...

Everyone knows that the Declaration of Independence is important, but what does it actually say? Members of American history classes analyze the Founding Fathers' arguments against British tyranny and for a more perfect union with a...

Investigate articles from the daily news and share opinions with classmates. Using current events, learners view a news program without sound and predict what news is being discussed by analyzing the visuals. Then they read news articles...

The Harlem Renaissance brought forth many American art forms including jazz, and the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Using a carefully curated set of documents from the Library of Congress, pupils see the cultural...

What are the factors that limit growth and expansion? As part of their study of Catalina Island, class members view the West of the West's documentary Magic Isle and research William Wrigley and the Santa Catalina Island Company. After...