Crash Course U.S. History is exactly what it sounds like. This youtube series is incredibly informative, fun, and relevant to the students. I use Crash Course not as a lesson replacement, but as an intro to what I will be covering in more detail. It could be used in many different ways, but I highly recommend it as a resource the students will enjoy.
This lesson looks at how the cult of domesticity oppressed and empowered women in the Nineteenth Century United Staets. America in Class Lessons are tailored to meet the Common Core State Standards. The Lessons present challenging primary resources in a classroom-ready format, with background information and analytical strategies that enable teachers and students to subject texts and images to the close reading called for in the Standards.
Learn about the Dance Theatre of Harlem is this segment from A Walk Through Harlem.
This site shows the typewritten draft of the December 8, 1941, speech in which Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. The draft shows Roosevelt's hand-written edits, including his change of the phrase a date which will live in world history to a date which will live in infamy. Students can also listen to the beginning of the speech.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, stunned virtually everyone in the United States military. Japan's carrier-launched bombers found Pearl Harbor totally unprepared. President Franklin Roosevelt quickly addressed Congress to ask for a declaration of war as illustrated in this audio excerpt. Although he never mentioned Europe or the fact that Germany had by then declared war on the United States, the Pearl Harbor attack allowed him to begin the larger intervention in the European war he had long wanted.
Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.
The Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. Instead they formed a union that would become a new nation—the United States of America. Read a transcription of the document here.
This lesson should be used to help students think critically about political ads, using historical examples. They can then use this knowledge to evaluate current examples of political ads.
Diane Nash was a college student when she started leading sit-in demonstrations to protest discrimination. In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, Nash describes her role in the Civil Rights movement.
The National Humanities center presents this collection of essays by leading scholars on the topic 'Divining America: Religion in American History'. The Essays explore religion in America in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The essays consider Native American religion, African American Christianity, the American Jewish experience, Mormonism, Catholicism, and Islam. They explore religious movements such as the Great Awakenings, the missionary movement, abolitionism, and fundamentalism. Topics like deism, pluralism, church and state separation, Manifest Destiny, and the Christian Right are also examined.
The Fourteenth Amendment established the equal protection clause, later used in key desegregation cases.
The Supreme Court's 1896 ruling legalized the separate but equal doctrine that sanctioned segregation.
The Supreme Court's 1927 opinion in Gong Lum v. Rice affirmed legalized school segregation.
The Supreme Court's opinion in Brown II reflects the struggle between federal and state governments on how and when school desegregation would occur.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped enforce the Brown ruling, a decade later.
This resource introduces students to the value the use of historical objects to teach the Declaration of Independence. Links and and a video present the Jefferson Desk while teaching primary source skills.
This lesson plan's goal is to examine the ways in which Miller interpreted the facts of the witch trials and successfully dramatized them. Our inquiry into this matter will be guided by aesthetic and dramatic concerns as we attempt to interpret history and examine Miller's own interpretations of it. In this lesson, students will examine some of Miller's historical sources: biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and transcripts of the Salem Witch trials themselves. The students will also read a summary of the historical events in Salem and study a timeline. The students will then read The Crucible itself.
This site provides facsimile reproductions of the handwritten patent application and its accompanying drawing, together with explanatory text and lesson plans. This lesson correlates to the National History Standards and the National Standards for Civics and Social Sciences
This course will explore how Americans have confronted energy challenges since the end of World War II. Beginning in the 1970s, Americans worried about the supply of energy. As American production of oil declined, would the US be able to secure enough fuel to sustain their high consumption lifestyles? At the same time, Americans also began to fear the environmental side affects of energy use. Even if the US had enough fossil fuel, would its consumption be detrimental to health and safety? This class examines how Americans thought about these questions in the last half-century. We will consider the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and technological aspects of the energy crisis. Topics include nuclear power, suburbanization and the new car culture, the environmental movement and the challenges of clean energy, the Middle East and supply of oil, the energy crisis of the 1970s, and global warming.
In small groups, students closely examine one sentence from the Gettysburg Address and create a multigenre project communicating what they have discovered about the meaning and significance of the text.