Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction

After a close reading of the First Amendment and the five freedoms it guarantees, class members examine the civil rights timeline to see how civil rights groups applied these freedoms to create change. Using the issue the class chose in...

As part of a study of civil disobedience, class members read excerpts from the writings of activists who were willing to break the law to protest unjust laws.

When Ida B. Wells was kicked off the whites-only ladies railway car, it ignited a ferocious warrior for civil rights. Wells and others worked to preserve the hard-won freedoms of Reconstruction, which were tenuous at best during...

Academics analyze 10 primary documents and photos to create a timeline of the LQBTQ+ movement. The activity includes an online worksheet. Scholars also participate in a group discussion to understand the long struggle the LGBTQ+...

Pupils can use PowerPoint as a tool to create clear timelines that show their lives in relationship to historical events. Take a trip to the computer lab and share this page with your class. Class members can watch each video and follow...

Can't travel to Richmond for your Civil War unit? This plan creates an authentic experience, using primary sources and the essential question: Over What Was the Civil War Fought? Historians examine the Appomattox Marker, the site of Gen....

Students create a time line about important events in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Young historians compare the presentation of medical care during the Civil War in passages from fictional and nonfictional texts. They examine passages from Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Soldier's...

Though the discrete content here is a pair of New York Times articles about a 1998 military strike on Iraq and the coincident impeachment by the House of Representatives of then-President Clinton, this detailed plan for creating,...

It is pointed, powerful, and painful! The first of three lessons about laws and practices that support inequality looks at how government policies created and reinforced segregated communities. Young social scientists read excerpts from...