Scholars generally agree on the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. This inquiry-based lesson asks high schoolers to consider more than the claims of who freed the enslaved people but the significance of the issues...

Students examine the Emancipation Proclamation. In this Emancipation Proclamation lesson, students examine the document and respond to 6 questions regarding it.

Explore how the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation affected everyday individuals in the Civil War era. Learners are given the opportunity to read and evaluate primary and secondary source material, and then to compose a writing...

The reviews for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin were as divisive as the novel itself. High schoolers finish the novel unit with an evaluation of the book's initial reviews, its characters' dreams and fears of...

Eighth graders, after researching antebellum North Carolina and the role of North Carolina in the Civil War, write, edit, publish, and produce their own plays.

Sixth graders investigate Civil Rights by participating in role-playing activities.  In this U.S. History lesson, 6th graders research the history of slavery in order to portray a story through their debating and acting...

To gain an understanding of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, class members investigate the Jim Crow Laws, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution, and the 1898 Supreme Court case,...

High schoolers examine the Reconstruction programs instituted following the American Civil War, the potential for change these efforts offered, and the realities that occurred. Guided by a PowerPoint presentation, class members read a...

Healing versus justice. The central source of tension following the United States Civil War was between the demands for healing and the demands for justice, the battle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress. A video introduces the...

Learners access oral histories that contain slave narratives from the Library of Congress. They describe the lives of former slaves, sample varied individual experiences and make generalizations about their research in journal entries.

Students explore the issue of the morality of slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States and construct a timeline containing freedom facts. Freedon issues and the rights and responsibilities of the time are examined.

Students research the U.S. holiday Juneteenth and examine the historical elements that contributed to the delayed announcement of the emancipation of slaves in Texas. They recreate a facsimile of the Emancipation Proclamation with the...

Students analyze primary and secondary sources to explore slavery and emancipation, and write letter or diary entry from point of view of slave Hannah Harris or plantation owner Robert Carter. Students then dramatize their creative...

Even though American slaves were officially emancipated in 1865, the effects of slavery perpetuated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Middle and high schoolers learn about the ways that discrimination and the Jim Crow laws...

Young scholars investigate slavery in America circa the American Revolution. They will examine point- of view and perspective as they research a variety of informational resources. While this is designed to be used with the PBS video...

Study history through photographs. In this visual arts and history lesson, learners learn to analyze photographs to discover details about life during the Civil War era. Students write journal entries as if they are the African-American...

Students explore the Gettysburg Address. In this U. S. history lesson, students examine Abraham Lincoln's speech and it's themes of freedom, equality, and emancipation.

Students explain why General Robert E. Lee decided to invade Maryland in September 1862; review the major events of the Maryland Campaign of 1862; describe the major events of the three phases of the Battle of Antietam; and assess the...

Students study the legislation and Amendments of Reconstruction period in America. For this Reconstruction lesson, students work in groups to dissect the Black Codes, an article in the US Constitution, as well as the 13th, 14th, and...

Students research the events that led to the Civil War and the Reconstruction. In this Civil War history lesson, students study images of Robert Smalls and research his role in the Civil War. Students review the South Carolina...

Students examine primary sources as related to Nevada and the Civil War. In this United States history lesson, students gather and analyze various primary sources in small groups and interpret unknown vocabulary words by using context...

Learners study the Civil War. In this American history lesson, students define segregation, make a segregation collage with pictures of people being separated from others because of their race, religion, or ethnic background, and write...

Dred Scott was a harbinger of the Civil War. An enslaved man claimed freedom because his owner had taken him into free territory. Not only did the Supreme Court rule that Dred Scott and his wife were to remain enslaved, but it also ruled...

The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the Confederate states. The Thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States. However, neither document defined freedom. The second lesson in the Reconstruction Era series examines...