Curated OER
Girls Around the World: Communicating Through First-Person Narratives
Teams select a society to investigate and create a chart comparing and contrasting the status of girls in that society with their own. They then craft and illustrate a personal narrative written from the point of view of a girl living in...
Curated OER
Family Stories and Personal Narratives
Fourth graders read various stories in their literature books about families. Individually, they make a timeline showing the most important events in their lives. They bring in one artifact from their lives and write a paper about it...
Curated OER
Time's Up
How was your year? Create an individual timeline that document learners' personal history from the previous year. After reading an article about celebrating New Year's in Japan, pairs interview each other to gather information about...
Curated OER
Dear Diary
Work on narrative writing with this lesson, in which middle schoolers analyze the characters from a selected piece of literature and write narrative diary pieces as the character. They work to understand the point of view of the...
Scholastic
The First Thanksgiving Feast for Grades 3-5
Scholars examine the first Thanksgiving through books and interviews while they complete a KWL chart. Pretending they are part of the feast, learners craft a scrapbook page that features images related to their experience. Pupils reflect...
Curated OER
Roller Time Line
Students create a timeline of a historical event or person's life and decorate the center of a roll of toilet paper with their timeline.
Curated OER
Personalized Postcards
Students create and send postcards to friends and family members. Using actual photographs, they write a rough draft and final draft of a paragraph and print it out to glue onto a postcard template to mail to their friend or family member.
Curated OER
Travel Through Time with a Family Member
Learners interview a family member. In this interviewing lesson, students choose a family member to interview and write about. Learners create a PowerPoint about the person including a timeline, photographs, and a narrative about their...
Curated OER
Immigrant Photo Analysis
Students examine photographs taken of immigrants during late 1800s and early 1990s in America, and identify factors involved in immigration through examination of primary documents that include statistics, trends, graphs, photographs,...
Curated OER
Autobiographical Talking Sticks
Students begin the lesson by developing a map of their lives. Individually, they take this information and write a personal narrative. They create symbols to represent the various times in their lives and introduce them into their...
Curated OER
"The Giver" by Lois Lowry
Learners read the novel, "The Giver", and test their comprehension through the game Jeopardy. Then students research individual rights of different cultures and write a summary of their findings. Learners develop a personal timeline of...
Curated OER
Creating Life Maps (Elementary, Reading/Writing)
Students create a personal life timeline to better explain how a historical timeline is effective in studying history. They also write a poem about themselves.
Curated OER
Portraits of History
Eighth graders research the Post-Revolution to Pre-Civil War era by investigating the life and contributions of a notable person. They create silhouettes which are framed with timeline. Also, they add the research information to the...
Curated OER
Who's Who at Our School
Students interview staff members at their elementary school in order to get to know them better. They write interview questions, conduct an interview, write a paragraph about the staff member, and take digital pictures of that person....
Penguin Books
An Educator’s Guide to Ruta Sepetys
Historical fiction novels give readers a chance to step into someone else's shoes. An educator's guide from Penguin Common Core Lesson Plans provides resources to accompany three historical fiction novels written by Ruta Sepetys: Between...
Curated OER
It's About Time
In collaborative teams, students create individual autobiographical presentations that help them investigate their historical background. As they collaborate and create their projects they discuss and come to realize how current...
Curated OER
History, Artifacts, and Museums
Eleventh graders interpret historical evidence presented in primary and secondary resources. For this historical artifacts lesson, 11th graders select and research historical topics that require them to interpret calendars, timelines,...
Scholastic
Thanksgiving Lessons Grades PreK-2
A quintessential resource for teaching an elementary unit on the first Thanksgiving addresses a variety of skills, including informational reading, critical thinking, comparing and contrasting facts, technology tools, and historical...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Would you fit in with the Cherokees?
Students use this activity as an introduction to the unit on Cherokee Native Americans. They discuss and research Cherokee dress and homes and identify difference between the Cherokee and the individuals in the class.
Curated OER
Dear Diary
Learners analyze a piece of writing by creating diary entries based on a character. In this reading comprehension instructional activity, students read an assigned book with their classmates and create a sketch of what they believe the...
Curated OER
My Heritage Country Report
High schoolers list five food dishes that are part of their family's heritage. Each student then does research of a country and a recipe (possibly a family recipe). With the help of members of his/her kitchen group, the student prepares...
Curated OER
Attic Hunting
Sixth graders investigate how journal writing helps preserve past, present and future history. They discover how different groups of people keep different types of journals and what the journals show about the lives of the writers.
Curated OER
The Study of the Spanish-Speaking People of Texas: Understanding Primary Sources
Students analyze Russell Lee's photo essay as a sign of segregation in Texas. They consider the differences between primary and secondary sources and how historians use these sources.
Curated OER
The Civil War--The Battle of Corydon
Eighth graders investigate the Battle of Corydon. In this American Civil War lesson, 8th graders discover details about the Battle of Corydon and the leaders of the battle. Students also identify how the Corydon commemorates the battle...