In this lesson, students interrogate their own assumptions about Abraham Lincoln in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of who Lincoln was. They investigate primary source documents in order to analyze the elements of Lincoln's life that have become legend and those that have been forgotten by history.

Video collection of Park rangers discussing the events of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The unit includes student activities.

"Teach students about civic participation and the role it has played in our judicial history with this two-part lesson comprising historic cases, a classroom mock trial, and a research project. Objective: Your students will analyze the impact of historic cases and the role of civic participation in these cases. Students will also demonstrate their understanding of the basic elements of a trial through a mock trial proceeding.
Time: Two class periods
Materials: Student Worksheets #1 and #2, access to online resources, paper, pencil or pen"

As part of a greater classwide congressional simulation, this assessment could be used to guide student research and essay writing.

Click! In the 1970s that word signaled the moment when a woman awakened to the powerful ideas of contemporary feminism. Today “click” usually refers to a computer keystroke that connects women (and men) to powerful ideas on the Internet. Click! aims to bridge the gap between those two clicks by offering an exhibit that highlights the achievements of women from the 1940s to the present. This exhibit explores the power and complexity of gender consciousness in modern American life.
Students will be able to explore, research, and analyze various topics such as women in politics, the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, Body and Health, and Workplace and Family.
Educators will have the ability to retrieve lesson plans on various topics such as free lesson plans to give teachers content materials and activities that will allow them to integrate the history of the modern women’s movement into their curriculum and help students engage with important historical questions about the struggles that have made the United States more equal and democratic. Each lesson plan focuses on a historical topic that engages with the concerns of students: politics and social movements; body and health; and workplace and family. These topics are investigated through the histories of individual women, their organizations, and their struggles for greater rights and social justice. Their stories are situated within larger histories to help students connect the modern women’s movement to other changes in post-World War Two America.

Four Presidents called Illinois home – Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Each presided over the country at a unique time in U.S. history, and this can be seen in the messages they communicated to the nation in their inaugural addresses. All four were reelected to a second term in office. Analysis of each president’s 1st and 2nd inaugural addresses provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the priorities, goals and intentions he outlined, as well as how the nation may have been changing at that time.

When our Constitution was written, it was silent on women. Excluded from most of the rights and privileges of citizenship, women operated in limited and rigid roles while enslaved women were excluded from all. Yet women have actively participated as citizens—organizing, marching, petitioning—since the founding of our country. Sometimes quietly, and sometimes with a roar, women’s roles have been redefined.

Use this page to find primary sources and document-based teaching activities related to women's rights and changing roles in American history. Many of the documents, photographs, and other sources are also featured in the exhibits Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote, at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, and One-Half of the People: Advancing Equality for Women, traveling the Country.

Support your students to embrace the larger questions featured in American Creed that ask:

What ideals unite us as a nation?
Where does a nation’s identity come from?
These lesson plans bring together teaching strategies, videos, and activities that will help you explore themes such as common ideals and national identity.

Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages occur simultaneously. Each stage is itself a process. Their logic is similar to a nested Russian matryoshka doll. Classification is at the center. Without it the processes around it could not occur. As societies develop more and more genocidal processes, they get nearer to genocide. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.

This packet provides an explanation of Ireland’s Great Hunger and provides ideas for primary source materials to use to describe the event A variety of discussion questions, writing activities, and other activities are provided that allow students to explore the facts and how different Irish artists used art and other media forms to depict the effects of the famine.

Anthony’s speech helps students understand the Constitution as a living document. She uses a variety of techniques of legal reasoning and interpretation to challenge other, exclusionary uses of the document. She bases an argument for change on an interpretation of a founding document.
Reconstruction is a challenging era for students to understand. Anthony’s speech captures the complexities of the Reconstruction Amendments and how they opened new avenues for disenfranchised groups to assert their rights. It also explores the interrelationship of the women’s suffragists with other movements. Anthony highlights the cultural, social, and political aspects of women’s struggle for equal rights. The speech does not simply assert women’s right to vote, but also more broadly addresses the subordinate position of women within the home and in other areas of public policy.

We live in a multi-media world, with images and sounds bombarding us practically from the moment we wake up until we go to bed at night. Young people especially are plugged into this visual and auditory environment. In this unit, students will learn how to take their research on a community-based issue that they care about and create a video. By showing their video to elected officials, policymakers, the general public and their peers, students may add their voices to the dialogue about community issues. Students will come to understand how to use an issue-based video to make their voices heard through the media and increase their participation as active and engaged citizens.

Overview / Description: This unit will examine the participation of Native Americans in World War II and their impact on the overall war effort. It will also look at the Native American perspective on the war and their participation. Guiding Questions: Why did Native Americans participate in WWII?What roles did Native Americans play in WWII?  How many Native Americans participated in WWII and what impact did they have on the overall war effort? In what ways did Native American participation in WWII connect to and/or change their cultural identity? What are some of the perspectives related to Native American participation in WWII? Learning goals/objectives:   Analyze primary and secondary sources related to the topic of Native American participation in World War II. Using information gathered, construct an argument about the presence of Native Americans in World War II. 

Overview / Description: This unit will examine the experience of Native Americans during the Great Depression in the United States. It will integrate comparisons with the experiences of other minority groups as well as exposing students to primary source documents related to the government policies which were adopted toward Native Americans during the time. Guiding Questions: What were the US government’s policies toward Native Americans leading up to the Great Depression? Were they fair? What was FDR’s response to the struggles of Native Americans during the Great Depression? What was the Native American experience like during the Great Depression and how did it compare to other minority groups? Learning goals/objectives:    Analyze primary and secondary sources related to the experience of Native Americans during the Great Depression. Summarize the experiences of Native Americans during the Great Depression. 

This teaching guide from the OER Project outlines their courses, PD, and other resources.

The OER Project is a coalition of educators and historians committed to boosting student engagement and achievement through transformational social studies programs. By empowering classroom teachers with better curricula, content, and a vibrant community, we deliver more compelling, impactful, and usable histories. “OER” stands for open educational resources. When you grab a free worksheet off Pinterest for your tenth graders, that’s an OER resource. We recognize the value of OER resources, but want to go beyond the typical content repository approach—we aim to improve OER by providing coherency, support, and community.

Currently, the OER Project offers two courses—Big History Project (BHP) and World History Project (WHP)—both of which are completely free, online, and adaptable to different standards and classroom needs. Unlike textbooks, lesson websites, and other commercial products, everything has been purposely built to truly empower teachers and leave traditional history courses in—sorry for the pun—the past. We also offer short, standalone courses for those who want to try the OER Project approach, but aren’t yet ready to take on a full history course. Our current standalone options include Project X, a course that uses data to explore historical trends to help make predictions about the future; Project Score, a course that uses writing tools and the use of Score, a free, online essay-scoring service to help support student writing; and Climate Project, an evidence-based overview of the global carbon problem that culminates in students developing a plan of action they can implement locally

Use the following NewsHour Classroom resources to examine King’s impact on civil rights and his ongoing legacy. Lessons include a deep dive anayisis of the “I have a dream” speech and the impact of Dr, King’s work on current evens

Cartoons in Sunday comic strips make us laugh. Political cartoons in the front section of the newspaper challenge us to think.

Because political cartoons present a particular point of view or story through symbolism and caricature, they are a particularly effective method for teaching history.

By interpreting political cartoons, students are encouraged to discover different points of view on the same historical event.

The three political cartoons in this section focus on Robert M. La Follette; they offer an additional opportunity to explore the progressive era in Wisconsin. Suggested activities, brief histories of each cartoon, a one-page biography of La Follette, and an introduction to cartoon analysis are also included.

By reading primary sources outlining the rights of prisoners of war, along with the primary accounts of American prisoners of war held by the Japanese, students should critically assess the nature of violations committed by the Japanese forces during World War II. Through this assessment, the students should be able to determine the specific ways Japanese forces violated the rights of American POWs. Students should also consider how the Geneva Conventions, and Japan’s lack of ratification, apply to the debates that surrounded Japanese war crimes at the postwar Tokyo Trials.

The Sift is a free weekly newsletter for educators delivered during the school year that offers a rundown of the latest topics in news literacy — including trends and issues in misinformation, social media, artificial intelligence, journalism and press freedom. It provides discussion prompts, teaching ideas, classroom guides and a monthly video series that features professional journalists.

The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.

Search the Atlantic Slave Trade or the Intra-America Slave Trade, as well as the people and images of victims and lesson plans that teach students how to use the data.