What does an ad reveal about a culture, or about the values of its intended audience? Class members examine a series of runaway slave ads—one of which was written by Thomas Jefferson—and consider what these primary source documents...

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.

Students examine the historical, social, and cultural context of modernist poetry. They explore websites, complete a chart, compare/contrast rural and urban life, watch a video of early New York, and complete a writing assessment...

Students analyze historical data. They explore the context in which it was created. They develop skills in historical analysis.

From indentured servitude to involuntary race-based servitude, slavery has taken many forms in American history. Class members examine three manumission petitions that reveal how the rights of African Americans and African American...

As part of a study of slavery in the United States, class members analyze documents related to the sale of slaves. They consider not only the text of the bills of sale but also what the appearance of the broadsides suggest.

Learners explore the policies of the "Save the Indian" reforms. Working in groups, they review the motives, methods, and effects of the "Save the Indian" campaign of the late 19th century. Through discussion and writing, they form an...

Pupils read and discuss how African- Americans are depicted in slave auction announcements. They research how Harriet Beecher Stow responds to the sale of slaves.

"Love it or leave it." "You're either for us or against us." Rhetoric and it's polarizing effects are the focus of a lesson that uses John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry as an exemplar. Groups examine primary source documents,...

Students investigate how early European exploration and colonization resulted in cultural and ecological interactions among previously unconnected peoples. They comprehend that Europeans had misconceptions about Native American literacy...

In this online interactive history activity, students respond to 10 short answer and essay questions about the achievements of James Madison. Students may check some of their answers on the interactive activity.

Seventh graders research the political, societal, and economic factors of World War I, World War II, and the 2001 war against terrorism. They participate in class discussions, write journal entries, and conduct Internet research. ...

For this history and math worksheet, students solve 20 problems pertaining to life in America in the 1800s. Students read four paragraphs and solve the five problems using that information. Basic math operations are used.

Middle schoolers create African Personal Power Figure boxes describing how they view themselves and discuss what personal traits are important to the preservation and improvement of a civilization.

Students use a database to find and read examples of slave narratives. In groups, they read the various narratives and discuss their feelings about them. They also research the time period in which the narratives were written to end...

Seventh graders investigate the meaning and impact of "yellow journalism." They determine how it affects people and how it played out in the USS Maine incident during the Spanish American War by reading articles and watching a PowerPoint...

Students list a variety of interests and achievements of Franklin and Jefferson. They take a position that one or the other's interests and achievements were more wide-ranging or that they were equivalent. They write out their findings.

How did Edith Turner, Chief of the Nottoway, navigate nineteenth-century Nottoway and Anglo-American societies while keeping the tribe's children on the reservation? This lesson looks at her life and her strong stance to maintain the...

This University of Virginia essay offers a selection of Irving's work from the larger work, "The Sketch Book."

This University of Virginia essay offers text summarizing and critiquing Washington Irving's work, "A History of New York."

This project promotes on-line collaborative research on nineteenth and twentieth century English-language collections of biographies of women.

Numerous photographs of a Virginia plantation (taken in 1960), an autobiographical account of life on a Mississippi plantation from the nineteenth century, and an interview with a former slave about a Louisiana plantation recorded in 1937.