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Safety Up in the Air

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore the controversy over a bill giving pilots the option to become armed federal law enforcement officers. They brainstorm other possible security measures for airplanes and airports.
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Banding Together

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore the effect that a particular culture can have on popular music. They develop their own music groups, each representing a style of music and a historical culture and perform their group's concert for the class.
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Power to the People

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Learners explore the pros and cons of government structures, then decide whether or not African countries accept the new African Union based on a variety of categories.
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Modern Conditions Placed on Traditions

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore the role of traditions in world cultures. They read a New York Times article dealing with recent changes in the traditional clothing worn in England's House of Lords
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Diamonds Are Forever Fueling Civil Wars

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Young scholars explore the failures of the UN embargo on conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone. They participate in a trading game to explore the international trading system and the ways in which it rewards and punishes countries.
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Stars and Bars Forever?

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students investigate icons, monuments and places that serve as symbols of American history, assessing how and why the meanings of these historic symbols evolve through time to acquire new or different significance.
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The Killing Fields

For Teachers 11th
Eleventh graders explore ethnic divisions in the West African nation of Ivory Coast and research instances of ethnic cleansing in nations throughout history. They create global history textbook entries that explore, compare and contrast...
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Dangerous Waters (and Lands)

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students investigate the dangers of various geographical locations and the threat they pose to humans and other living things. They, in groups, research dangerous geographical locations and create a group "front page" highlighting these...
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Working It Out

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students participate in a simulation in which they are arbitrarily assigned different work roles and compare their experiences to those discussed in a New York Times article about the racial divisions in a pork production plant.
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State of Affairs

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students examine the various roles and duties of state government officials and offices to create an Informative Guide to Our State's Government. They explore the changing relationship between governor and lieutenant governor in New York.
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Masters of War

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Young scholars explore how artists depict wartime historical events. Then students create their own works of art depicting a historical event that has taken place during their own lives. They create a classroom gallery.
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Treasure in the Trash

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Learners decode archaeological artifacts in order to recreate an event, using discarded objects as a model for real-life artifacts. They apply this model to reconstructing historical or literary events from artifacts they create.
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Consuming History

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students research various foods as well as indigenous plants and animals from different historical eras around the world. They use their research to create a design for theme restaurants.
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Casting a Ballot for New Freedoms

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students use a New York Times article about the first free election in Indonesia in over four decades as a tool for learning about the government and politics, economy, religion, international relations, and people of Indonesia in the...
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Kashmir in the Crossfire

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students, in groups, research specific decades and then create multi-tiered timelines representing Indian and Pakistani relations and politics during those decades.
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Diplomatic Field of Dreams

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore past U.S.-Cuban relations, by researching key events in the past century and creating a class timeline, in order to evaluate restrictions in policy on Cuba and the potential for exhibition baseball games.
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Fishing for Solutions

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students investigate the many ecological and economic issues related to over fishing the world's marine resources. Working in committees, students research the related topics of equipment and fishing techniques.
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Amidst the Rubble of Ruined Cities

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students, in committees, develop and propose solutions to rebuild various elements of Colombia's infrastructure in the wake of the January 25, 1999 earthquake, as well as compare and contrast the earthquake's affects on Colombia to an...
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Answering the Call of the Wild

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students explore wildlife conservation by investigating the reintroduction of species into their natural habitats and species near extinction. They create a poster and a position paper that explains the importance of preserving this...
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Striking Out At the Serbs

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students are introduced to the most recent stage of the conflict in Kosovo by allowing them to examine the positions and actions of various key figures (people, countries, and organizations).
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Explosive Knowledge

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students examine China's suspected theft of American nuclear secrets, as a springboard for the creation of a research-based, multi-tiered timeline that traces the development, regulation, and use of nuclear weapons from the 1940's to today.
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We, the First People

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students explore new support regarding the earliest peopling of America by examining multiple theories on the migration of the first people to America, investigating related archaeological finds, and creating research-based scientific...
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In the Melting Pot

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students work in small groups, each group examining a different aspect of the immigration process (such as visas, work permits, and citizenship exams) or of illegal immigration (such as deportation), to better explain the immigration...
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And You Were (Almost) There

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore the genre of biography in both its traditional and nontraditional forms. They examine Edmund Morris's unorthodox biography of Ronald Reagan. They conduct research on an historic American and write their own biographies.