Personal Reflections

Based on Alex Haley's moving essay "My Furthest Back Person: The African," these 11 questions support comprehension and prepare readers for discussion of the text. Use this tool, and the essay, as a nonfiction addition to units on...

It's a classic conundrum of economics: voters want jobs, but don't want to spend the money required for businesses to hire. This political cartoon analysis worksheet has students analyzing this enigma and responding to 3 talking points...

Using gears as a visual metaphor, this political cartoon analysis worksheet gives a clear picture of one artist's perspective on the U.S. economy. Background information helps give pupils access to the cartoon's context, and 3 talking...

Political cartoons are a poignant way to examine energy sources. This analysis handout has scholars examining a cartoon by Joe Heller (a link to his gallery is included for possible extensions). Background information reminds pupils of...

Learners will share ideas about class mobility. They create a timeline that chronicles milestones in their own lives, and synthesize their learning by writing personal essays about their class status and aspirations for the future.

Encourage your class to recognize the diversity in the beliefs and backgrounds of their peers. Learners use the acronym FRAME to consider culture, background, and life experiences.

Connect historical text to primary sources. Researchers observe and discuss primary sources. Then, historians bring in their own personal artifacts and connect them back to their history.

Help your middle schoolers identify personal experience narratives in their own lives through telling stories themselves and from family members or other adults. They study personal experience narratives in Swapping Stories and compare...