Poets of Christmas Past

What is an oral history interview? What goes into the planning and what should be said? Why is it important that we know and learn from oral history? This is an excellent learning exercise to support your young historians as they conduct...

Bring U.S. history to your language arts class with this lesson. Middle schoolers complete an interview for an oral history project, and discuss the importance of oral histories - and how they embellish written accounts. They write...

Oral history has brought a multitude of lessons, stories, and factoids to our current knowledge of the past. Let us continue to use oral history traditions through a lesson plan that encourages pupils to discover and appreciate where...

Explore women's history through films and filmmaking. An innovative research project prompts class members to create their own screenplay about a figure in women's history. After outlining their characters, settings, and plots, young...

The history of the northern states' involvement in the slave trade is not widely known. This resource uses the PBS documentary, Traces of the Trade, and the nonfiction book, Children of the New England Slave Trade, to examine this aspect...

Young historians research the connections between their personal histories and the histories of our country to gain a deeper understanding of who they are. To begin, class members write about an object that they consider significant to...

Five important tenets of any social studies class are available for young historians with a poster that defines history as an account of the past. It encourages learners to question reliability of an author's perspective, as well as to...

Skeletons may not be able to speak, but they can still tell us a lot. High schoolers watch a short video about the ways biological anthropologists can use a skeleton's bone structure to determine age, gender, place of birth, and social...

Students read and discuss an article about Olga Loya, a modern storyteller. They watch a videotaped performance of a story and then create a storytelling experience for a story of their choice to share with the class.