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Technology: The State of the Internet

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students develop ratings criteria for evaluating Websites. Once they brainstorm lists of qualities for Websites, students, in pairs, browse various Maine Websites and create evaluation systems. As a follow-up activity, students may...
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Gatsby and the American Twenties Newspaper

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students research 1920's US History.  In this historical literature lesson, students use the novel The Great Gatsby as a tool to examine the era.  They work in individually to create newspaper articles based on different...
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Front Page News

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students collect and analyze the front pages of various newspapers and perform research on the Titantic tragedy. They choose a name for their newspaper, a headline, gather photographs, and write a front page article. Using computer...
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Colonial Migration

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students, in groups, create a student book for an assigned group of immigrants to the Colonial United States (Huguenots, Scots, Irish, Africans.) They create drawings for the book and rhyming text that depicts three struggles that...
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Collars, Curtains and Kings: Exploring the History of Lace

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students design to explore the world of objects as related to lace. Students will create a lace mural highlighting what they learn about the world of lace. Students brainstorm ideas via the internet websites.
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Commemoration of the Gettysburg Battlefield

For Teachers 9th - 12th
High schoolers use a multimedia project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two American Communities in the Civil War, to create a presentation about the significance of the Gettysburg Address. They work on expert teams to explore the interactive...
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A Tale of Two Wars

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students create Venn diagrams comparing and contrasting the Vietnam and Iraq wars. They write informed letters to their senators expressing their opinions and possible solutions to the war. They also create mock bumper stickers...
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Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Middle schoolers compare/contrast the Hollywood film industry of the 30s and 40s with Hollywood today. They watch a video on David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock, conduct Internet research, and create a poster to present their findings.
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It's a Draw!

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students assess the ways in which editorial cartoons, both current and historic, offer insight into events that shape our world. They create a poster that includes a current editorial cartoon and their explanation of the details of the...
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Current Events - Attack on America

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students explore and discuss significance of what happened to the world on 9-11-01, and create a paper quilt.
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Lesson Ideas to Enrich Student Inquiry into the Holocaust

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students inquire about the Holocaust. In this Holocaust lesson, students read books and discuss their thoughts. Students also collect current event articles from newspapers. Students investigate ghettos, Pearl Harbor and Navajo Code...
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A Colony is Born : Lesson 6 -To Leave or Not to Leave

For Teachers 5th
Fifth graders connect reasons for coming to the New World with identity. The create identities and place them in one of three settled regions. They refer to prior study notes in their Colonial Notebooks to establish their identities.
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Walter Cronkite: Witness to History

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students brainstorm a list of news sources. They interview people about today's media and discuss their results. After watching segments of a film about Walter Cronkite, they role play as reporters and subjects from an historic period...
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Overcoming Censorship Through Art

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students create an art piece that expresses their opinions while circumventing hypothetical government restrictions in this lesson on art and government censorship. Emphasis is placed upon historical instances of censorship around the...
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County Chronicles

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Young scholars review and use the information from previous lessons about their county. In groups, they write articles for various sections of a class newspaper. They review and edit each others work and publish their newspaper using a...
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Canada's Press: Making a Historical Newspaper

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Learners examine several colonial-era editorial cartoons. They evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques the cartoonists used to display their messages and share one editorial cartoon with the class emphasising what message has been...
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Germans and Irish in Augusta and Franklin Counties

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students examine 19th century newspapers, a last and testament, and census manuscripts to analyze the Irish and German immigrant communities in the 1850s and 1860s. They write a letter from the perspective of an Irish or German immigrant.
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Weather Timeline

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Students create a timeline of historical weather events in Bedfordshire, England. In this local weather instructional activity, students interview elders, research the Internet and newspapers to gather information about weather events of...
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Prairie Voices: Community Development, Investigating Local History

For Teachers 3rd - 12th
Learners investigate local history. In this research skills lesson, students examine historic landmarks, tax records, fire maps, town plans, historic photographs, newspapers, and other primary sources to learn about local communities in...
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Local and Global Sustainability Unit

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students examine the characteristics that define a sustainable community at the local and global level. They create and prioritize a list of traits, read and discuss a magazine article, and create a poster.
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What Can We Discover About Colorado?

For Teachers K - 6th
Young scholars locate Colorado and its neighbors on a map (either in a book or on the Internet). They create a graphic that illustrates what they know and want to know about the state (KWL); finally, they draw and label Louisiana maps.
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The Vietnam War

For Teachers 10th - 12th
Students acquire information about the Vietnam War Era from the internet, textbook and various sources. They transfer the information that they have acquired into a newspaper format. Students create editorials, cartoons, graphics and...
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Letters from Rifka

For Teachers 4th - 5th
Learners read Karen Hesse's book "Letters from Rifka" and explore how it presents the experiences of a Russian immigrant to America. They research and write reports on the experiences of various immigrants from different cultures, keep...
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Constructivism (Line and shape)

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students use the element of line to create a composition, then apply a printmaking technique to create a composition.