How can opinions slant facts? Workshop participants learn how to examine primary and secondary sources and identify the author's point of view. They also examine how visual art impacts the meaning and rhetoric of sources. Full of...

You'll C-E-R a difference in classroom achievement after using a helpful instructional activity. Designed for economics, civics, government, and US history classes, participants practice using the CER model to craft arguments about...

Students see how to use primary and secondary sources to investigate history. Whether it is a photograph, book, map, letter, postcard, newspaper, or official document, students can use sources to reconstruct and relive history.

Learners investigate the Colonial Era by completing a template on their computers.  In this U.S. History lesson plan, students discuss the differences between primary and secondary sources and identify several different sources as...

Consider how you can use a visual source, such as a painting, to learn about a historical time or event. Young learners discuss primary sources and how they differ from secondary sources, then analyze the painting Mother and Child by...

Was Nat Turner a hero or a violent criminal? Using primary sources and images that discuss the rebellion of enslaved people he led in antebellum Virginia, scholars consider the question. Then, they create memorials to Turner and...

Women rose to the challenge when the nation's war effort called them—but were sent home when the GIs came back from World War II. Young historians consider whether the United States valued women's contributions during the war using a...

Students review the meaning and application of primary and secondary sources in research. They determine how researchers locate primary source documents before looking at signatures as a validating factor on many primary sources....

After working in groups to analyze primary sources related to a historical hoax, learners will discuss how people managed to be fooled and work to identify one of the biggest April Fools jokes in history.

Explore New England government in the 1700's with your class. They will identify historical documents as primary or secondary sources, then read and discuss the significance of these documents as they relate to the "freedom of religion"...

Have you ever wanted to do something so perfectly you wound up not doing it well at all? Young historians use primary and secondary documents to analyze the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The issues surrounding the...

Students identify the role of the museum as a cultural resource in the community. They use primary and secondary sources to evaluate institutional, and media influences on people and society in both historical and contemporary settings.

The National Women's History Museum provides a plan designed to accompany their online CyberExhibit, Chinese American Women; a History of Resilience and Resistance. After examining a series of primary and secondary source documents,...

Have you ever been accused of something without cause? The sixth installment of an eight-part series asks scholars to create a museum exhibit on the anti-communist activities in the United States at the start of the Cold War. To make...

Students consider the connection between poverty and education. In this language arts and social studies lesson plan, students research primary and secondary sources in order to explore the relationship between education and poverty.

Your students are obviously clever, but now they can be C-L-E-V-E-R! Enhance a research project with an exercise that prompts learners to identify the creator, location, era, and value of the information source, as well as provide an...

Combine a fantastic review of primary source analysis with a study of Captain John Smith's influence on the Chesapeake Bay region in the seventeenth century. Your young historians will use images, a primary source excerpt, and maps...

What does it mean to say that a right is unalienable? How did the founding fathers convey this revolutionary concept in the Declaration of Independence? Engage in a close reading and analysis of the Declaration of Independence, and...

Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores were both born in 1858, and both came to the Dakota territory in 1883, but they influenced the developing country of America in different ways. Elementary and middle schoolers apply written and...

What's the difference between a diary and a memoir? Young historians explore the ramifications of this question as they learn how to use primary source materials to gain an understanding of life on the Texas frontier.

How reliable is a painting of the first Thanksgiving if it was created 300 years after the fact? Learners assess the validity of a primary source image to determine what it can actually reveal about this event. 

Students identify and evaluate primary and secondary sources relating to James Smithson and his gift to the United States. In this Smithson to Smithsonian lesson, students also examine the debate surrounding how to use the gift from...

Trace Columbus' voyages by locating them on 21st Century maps.  Using a navigators lesson, 4th graders will examine the Age of Exploration and trace Columbus's routes accurately on laminated world maps using different maps. Note:...

Introduce your middle schoolers to the lives of past Native Americans. First, learners work together to put photographs in a sequence. Then, using their sequence, they create stories to share with the whole class. No matter how old your...