Most Americans have heard of the Gettysburg Address, but may not know what it means and why is it so important. Following guidance and scaffolded prompts, scholars analyze the short document that left an undeniable impact on the American...

An interesting lesson plan uses a hands-on-activity and group discussion to explore the 1864 presidential election and Lincoln's plans for ending the Civil War. Designed for high school, the resource also requires historians to...

Was the Emancipation Proclamation a revolutionary document or just a military strategy? It proclaimed that all those enslaved in Confederate states would be "forever free." Logistically, though, it did little. The order, however,...

Eleventh graders examine the impact of Abolitionist leaders on sectionalism. In small groups, they conduct research on a famous abolitionist, and develop and write a newspaper cover page based on their assigned abolitionist.

Hook your learners with a great project. They research the underground railroad and civil rights movement through literature, view the video The Underground Railroad: Escape from Slavery, and read the book House of Dies Drear in...

Who gets to vote? Learn more about struggles for suffrage throughout United States history with a lesson based on primary source documents. Middle schoolers debate the importance of women's suffrage and African American...

Eleventh graders explore slavery and the civil war. In groups, 11th graders discuss and slavery and identify reasons for its beginning. In groups, they role-play a character for a talk show. Students determine what slavery was like in...

What is freedom? The United States grappled with the question at the end of the Civil War after four million enslaved people were freed. Using circulars and images from the Reconstruction period, individuals examine how successful the...

Students examine the African American experience after they received their freedom after the Civil War. They complete a Mind Map, read and analyze a poem, and write a paragraph using key vocabulary words. They analyze the impact of the...

Eighth graders examine the importance of battlefield preservation.  In this US History lesson, 8th graders participate in a virtual tour of battle sites.  Students create a map of Gettysburg to see the topography of the battle...

Students utilize an online database to conduct research and analyze the conditions for African-Americans before and after World War I. They consider the role of the 92nd and 93rd divisions in affecting social change.

Learners access oral histories that contain slave narratives from the Library of Congress. They describe the lives of former slaves, sample varied individual experiences and make generalizations about their research in journal entries.

The third activity in a unit that traces the history of African Americans serving in the US Congress examines the period from 1929 through 1970. After reading a contextual essay that details the few African Americans elected to Congress...

Through a careful reading and examination of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, scholars take part in grand conversations about the novel's contents, slavery, and the impact the book had on it. Furthermore,...

Why are some immigrant groups in the United States embraced while others become disenfranchised? To answer this question, teams investigate why groups emigrated to the US, why some of these these peoples were...

Any study of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement would be incomplete without an examination of the life of Malcolm X. Class members view a short biographical video and analyze primary source documents to gain an understanding of the...

Students explore photographs from the Civil War Era. In this Civil War lesson, students consider how photography impacted public opinion of the war as they analyze the provided photographs and discuss the evolution of early photography.

Get high school historians to step outside their own shoes by responding to JFK's inaugural address from the perspective of a civil rights activist, a soviet diplomat, or a Cuban exile. After a class discussion about the address,...

Baseball is a relatively high-interest topic through which social studies classes can explore racial prejudice in the US. Video clips provide much of the background information that groups record on their handout and then share with the...

Students investigate the Gettysburg Campaign and the major actions for each day of the battle. They read primary source documents, write a diary entry, analyze the Gettysburg Address, and write a persuasive speech regarding an issue in...

Learners write a first-person narrative from the perspective of a runaway slave, or a historical character of the period, and present their story orally.

Students conduct research about the Civil War and the slavery movement. They examine primary and secondary resources. The use of the internet and web slides are resources made available for students to make cognitive connections.

Students explore the concept of slavery and manumission through a variety of activities. In this civil rights lesson, students gather information from primary sources, then analyze the politics and historical context of the time....

Fifth graders become familiar with the events of Reconstruction and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. In this reconstruction instructional activity, 5th graders work in pairs where each student  creates a building with blocks and...