This lesson will introduce the students to the events surrounding the Boston Massacre. They will analyze a primary source and research accounts of the events. Picture taken by: Miriam Richards
By exploring historical accounts of events surrounding the Boston Tea Party, students learn about the sources and methods that historians use to reconstruct what happened in the past.
This article profiles Paul Siple, a Boy Scout selected to accompany Admiral Byrd to Antarctica in 1928.
Do your students like running things? The new version of Branches of Power allows them to do something that no one else can: control all three branches of the U.S. government.
In Branches of Power your students will:
Pick leaders for each branch of government
Create a presidential agenda and learn about the executive branch powers
Introduce bills and pass laws out of Congress
Apply judicial review to passed laws
This lesson explores the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the end of legal school segregation and other forms of legal segregation throughout the United States. Access to this resource requires a free educator login.
A reading which reviews the context and history of the landmark Supreme Court case regarding the unequal nature of racial segregation in public schools.
In this video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey, learn about bubonic plague and how city officials in San Francisco tried to contain its spread in the early 1900s..
Students research the effects of the Vietnam war on a specific group of people who were involved. They then create Internet scavenger hunts to share with the class.
As an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, Burke Marshall played a key role in the federal government's efforts to desegregate the South. Representing the presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Marshall mediated conflicts between civil rights protesters and southern white officials. In this interview, Marshall recalls the 1961 Freedom Rides and the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi.
Calling on her two best known books, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the US Constitution and Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence, Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of American Colonial and Revolutionary History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, briefly discusses some aspects of the American Revolution and the creation of the US Constitution.
This textbook introduces aspects of the history of Canada since Confederation. “Canada” in this context includes Newfoundland and all the other parts that come to be aggregated into the Dominion after 1867. Much of this text follows thematic lines. Each chapter moves chronologically but with alternative narratives in mind. What Aboriginal accounts must we place in the foreground? Which structures (economic or social) determine the range of choices available to human agents of history? What environmental questions need to be raised to gain a more complete understanding of choices made in the past and their ramifications? Each chapter is comprised of several sections and some of those are further divided. In many instances you will encounter original material that has been contributed by other university historians from across Canada who are leaders in their respective fields. They provide a diversity of voices on the subject of the nation’s history and, thus, an opportunity to experience some of the complexities of understanding and approaching the past. Canadian History: Post-Confederation includes Learning Objectives and Key Points in most chapter sections, intended to help identify issues of over-arching importance. Recent interviews with historians from across Canada have been captured in video clips that are embedded throughout the web version of the book. At the end of each chapter, the Summary section includes additional features: Key Terms, Short Answer Exercises, and Suggested Readings. The key terms are bolded in the text, and collected in a Glossary in the appendix.
Children in grades K-2 can enjoy this fun-filled activity book about the Capitol and its history while visiting the Capitol and at home.
What should a Capitol building look like? How does the U.S. Capitol building serve as a symbol of the U.S. government?
Cartography is the art and science of graphically representing a geographical area on a flat surface such as a map. For Indigenous peoples, cartography is more than just topography or mapping locations. For many Indigenous communities, it's about values, culture and traditional understandings.
This lesson will allow students to create their own meme or GIF dipicting a political cartoon during the time of the American Revolution. Students will be able to observe different cartoons from the time period and discuss their meaning.
By studying paintings from the Cave of Lascaux (France) and the Blombos Cave (South Africa), students will discover that pictures can be a way of communicating beliefs and ideas and can give us clues today about what life was like long ago.
This article is an overview of the life of Cesar Chavez and his efforts to promote civil rights. Access to this resource requires a free educator login.
In 1968, Cesar Chavez led a boycott that resulted in a collective bargaining agreement guaranteeing field workers the right to unionize. Learn more about how Chavez grew from migrant farm worker to civil rights champion in this video
This activity is designed to accompany the contextual essay “A Changing of the Guard: Traditionalist, Feminist, and the New Face of Women in Congress, 1955–1976,” from the Women in Congress website, history.house.gov/exhibition-and-publications/wic/women-in-congress/. Students have the opportunity to learn more about the women who served in Congress from 1955 to 1976. Students are encouraged to analyze the role women Representatives and Senators played in Congress during this era, as well as the ways in which they may have changed the institution.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was written during atime of change. This lesson plan, the first part of a two-part lesson, helps to set the historical, social, cultural, and economic context of Gilman's story.