Students interpret historical evidence presented in primary and secondary resources. In this American Civil War  lesson, students research diaries, letters, and photographs of women involved in the war.

It's one thing to read history, it's another to live it. Pupils examine secondary and primary sources that detail the training of soldiers before deployment. Then, they consider the impact of primary sources on how they understand the...

Class members are introduced to a project-based learning unit on US immigration with an activity that asks them to analyze sheet music and other primary source materials to uncover issues raised by immigration.  

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...

Reclaim forgotten philosophers of the twentieth century. Feminist philosophers have shaped our current concepts of politics and gender, but they are seldom mentioned in the classroom. Change that omission with a lesson plan that includes...

You can claim that soda rots people's teeth or that dinosaurs were actually birds, but your claim will not stand up if it is not backed by evidence. A handout from UNC Writing Center, the seventh in the Writing the Paper series of 24,...

Young scholars determine how President Lincoln promoted emancipation. In this slavery lesson, students examine primary documents, including the U.S. Constitution, to reconstruct Lincoln's attempts to end slavery and deliver the...

The post-Revolutionary Period of 1781-1787, also known as the Critical Period, is the focus of a series of lessons that prompt class members to examine primary source documents that reveal the instability of the period of the...

The murder of Emmett Till is the focus of a guided inquiry that asks scholars to research the events, the trial, recent attempts to reopen the case and the effect of the murder on people today.

To continue their study of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the beginning of the civil rights movement, class members watch the YouTube video of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" as an introduction to an examination of...

Watch the pivotal moments of America's presence in embattled Britain during World War II with an exceptional interactive tool. From personal stories about life on the front lines to a map that tracks every group and division...

The 1960's marked shifts in American culture, politics, and policy. Your class groups up to research a series of primary source documents resulting in a timeline and a 15 minute oral presentation. Active learning all the way.

Third graders examine photographs as primary source documents. Students are broken into groups and are given photographs of the See Family.

Investigate and analyze Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation using primary and secondary sources. The sixth installment of an eight-part series analyzes the meaning of Lincoln's document in relation to its impact on the Civil...

Young archeologists discover the significance of ordinary objects from the past in an interesting lesson on artifact analysis. The activity focuses on examining the image of a powder horn from the Revolutionary War to understand what it...

Verification of provenance and the original source of an image or video can be a long and winding process. Young journalists learn about the difficulty of finding the original source of a scrape, a copy of an original news story, and...

How do barns serve as a window to a community's past? Here are a series of lessons on the symbolism and historical context of barns throughout American history. Topics include community-building, in-depth primary and secondary...

Though there could be no true justice for the horrors of the Holocaust, many of those responsible for crimes against humanity were found guilty in the eyes of the law. Using primary and secondary sources in the 16th installment of a...

There's nothing like the Wild Wild West! Scholars investigate the American Frontier through the eyes of Kit Carson. To complete the first installment of a three-part series, they use presentations, a short video, and primary and...

The lesson guides young academics through the steps in producing a 10-page research paper on any topic in American history. Historians begin by formulating a thesis and gathering resources, then move on to creating an outline, and end...

High schoolers interpret historical evidence presented in primary and secondary resources. In this research skills lesson plan, students research the death of Meriwether Lewis using forensic evidence presented in...

Fifth graders use primary sources to explore events witnessed by ordinary people.  In this primary documents lesson, 5th graders  answer critical thinking questions based on their documents.  Students recognize the...

Explore how the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation affected everyday individuals in the Civil War era. Learners are given the opportunity to read and evaluate primary and secondary source material, and then to compose a writing...

Money can't buy happiness, but it can put food on the table and pay the bills. The first of a five-lesson unit teaches pupils about the unemployment rate in 1963 and its relationship with the March on Washington. They learn how to create...