Prompted by a viewing of Emiko and Chizu Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon, a documentary about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, high schoolers examine a series of documents, including the Bill of Rights and the UN’s...

By having scholars tackle this interdisciplinary lesson, they'll see how social studies and environmental science are related as they explore the impact that the construction of a dam will have on the population and ecosystem of the...

Scholars work in pairs to decide whether leaders wrote the Declaration of Independence for the rich and powerful or for every man. To draw their conclusion, pairs read excerpts from two historians and complete a graphic organizer...

The United States of America was founded on firm ideals of both the pursuit of happiness and a spirit of reverence. Through a close reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The May-Pole of Merry Mount," you can examine what some consider was a...

Learn more about the history and five pillars of Islam with an extensive resource that focuses on the religion's connection to art. Focusing on calligraphy, textiles, and architecture, the packet illustrates the beauty of the artistic...

Who has the power? Scholars investigate the creation of the three branches of government in the United States Constitution. They analyze just why the framers created the branches the way they did.

The Boston Massacre may be an iconic event in American history, but perhaps the British soldiers had another point of view. Using primary sources, including reports from Boston newspapers and secondary sources from the British...

Is your class studying President George H.W. Bush? If so, they can learn how he became president and some of the economic problems he faced in office by reading this brief informational text. There are three questions to answer below the...

Class members use the think-pair-share strategy to compare the views of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington and to consider how each man's backgrounds influenced his philosophy.

In groups, learners review one of four selected Supreme Court cases. The whole class watches a video introducing the four cases, and then small groups dive into Internet research in an attempt to write a two-paragraph summary of the...

This, the sixth in a series of 10 related resources, examines the life and works of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an African American author, born in 1825, who advocated literacy for both free and enslaved African Americans.

What is Thomas Jefferson signing? Focus on American history with this cross-curricular math puzzle. Learners utilize addition and subtraction skills to solve the mystery of the Fourth of July. All numbers are 3-digit, and there are no...

Discuss life in the 1930s in relation to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, then do a cross-media analysis. Here you'll find background information on film maker John Ford, writer John Steinbeck, and 1930s America. You can compare the...

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...

What if society sought equality by handicapping the gifted and dispelling any traces of diversity? Kurt Vonnegut Jr. offers one possible answer to this question through his incredibly engaging and thought-provoking satirical...

Though Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle shocked the American public into a thorough examination of the meat-packing industry, the author was disappointed that his book's main argument—the exploitation of American immigrants—was not...

Integrate history, math, and art into a study of The Grapes of Wrath with a series of activities that ask learners to investigate the social, political, economic, and environmental factors at play during the 1930s. Designed to be used...

This St. Patrick's Day, young writers imagine they found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. After a class discussion and brainstorming, scholars compose a narrative essay making sure they incorporate transitions and at least three...

A cross-curricular lesson combines poetry and history for your middle and high schoolers. The class critically examines Kipling's poem, "White Man's Burden" as historical evidence of the Imperialist ideology popular during his time. The...

A timeline can be a powerful learning tool because it reveals a pattern in events. While few would consider St. Augustine, Florida a hotbed of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, a selection of background information and a timeline of...

This straightforward fill-in-the-blank activity could be used for a variety of purposes. Young historians are given 10 sentences about the branches of government; they fill in the blanks with terminology that is related to the United...

The strategies civil rights activists Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois proposed for blacks to achieve racial progress is the focus of an activity in which class groups identify the strategies as well as the benefits and drawbacks...

Family and friendship are two very important themes of the historical fiction novel The Orphan of Ellis Island by Elvira Woodruff. From video clips and writing prompts to reader's theater and family interviews, this resource...

Elmer Imes was not only a brilliant physicist but also a civil rights activist. After an introductory lecture, groups read two articles about a traffic accident that killed one Fisk University student and injured several others. The...