his lesson uses music and art in a vocabulary study of unfamiliar words from the song "America the Beautiful," increasing students' vocabulary while also increasing their knowledge of U.S. geography. A discussion to activate students' prior knowledge about sights and scenery throughout the United States is followed by a read-aloud and introduction to the song "America the Beautiful," which is then sung in each session of the lesson. Students learn the meanings of the song's words through shared reading and the use of context clues and images. Students then use photographs, illustrations, and descriptive language to create a mural shaped like the United States. Finally, through pictures and words, students reflect on what they have learned. This lesson is appropriate and adaptable for any patriotic event or holiday, and many of the vocabulary strategies are adaptable for other texts or word lists, as well.

While investigating the properties of rocks, students will create a classroom rock collection.

These activities will provide students an opportunity to reflect their culture through art.

The National Archives provides primary source sets, educator resources and articles, and printable primary sources analysis sheets. This page on the site outlines how to analyze primary source documents. Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Teach your students to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments.

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History provides elementary lesson plans, student activity sheets and professional development for teachers centered on American History. This unit is focused on the US Constitution.

This activity uses Patricia Polacco's book "Thunder Cake" to help students understand how daily life has changed over the past 150 years.

In this geography activity, students will review their understanding of map skills using Nearpod's interactive quiz game, Time to Climb.