Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Immigration: History through Art and Documents
Click to download this two-lesson unit :
231 Items
"The Spirit of Empire": America Debates Imperialism
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
America's Role in the World: World War I to World War II
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
The Origins of US Cold War Fears, 1946–1961
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
The Cold War as a Culture War: Visualizing Values and the Role of Pop Culture
Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .
Native American Cultures and the Impact of the Boarding Schools
Click to download this four-lesson unit.
Explorers and Exploration in Early American History: Shifting the Narrative
Click to download this five-lesson unit.
What Does Liberty Look Like?
" We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of Independence , Thomas Jefferson, 1776 Background The concept of "Liberty" is one that many hold dear. However, what liberty means to each individual may vary depending on his or her situation. During the American Revolutionary War period, many saw opportunity to speak out and test the waters of liberty. With the issuance of the Declaration of...
World War I, African American Soldiers, and America’s War for Democracy
Click to download this lesson plan.
The Cold War: Discussing the Speech of President Kennedy in 1963
Introduction The Cold War is the term for the rivalry between the two blocs of contending states that emerged following the Second World War. It was a series of confrontations played out on the world stage between the non-Communist states, led by the United States and Great Britain, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union. In 1946 the former prime minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, gave a speech in Missouri foreshadowing the divide between East and West using the metaphor of an "iron curtain." The reality of this divide was evidenced in Germany in Berlin in 1961....
Rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan
Historical Background As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks particularly, coupled with the impact of mechanization on agricultural practices, challenged the financial stability of American farmers in ways never before experienced. The late 1860s saw the birth of the Grange (a.k.a. the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry), an organization dedicated to the social and political uplift of farmers. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, farmers organized collectively, at...
Lincoln and Presidential Power
Introduction When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, his experience in politics and government included serving in the Illinois legislature and the US House of Representatives. He had also studied law and was licensed to practice law in Illinois at age twenty-seven. This seems like scant experience for a man who would lead a country through its greatest internal challenge. However, Lincoln found a way to draw on his life experience and his professional knowledge to lead the nation with an astuteness and skill that might have escaped a more...
Native American Housing
Historical Background American Indians (First Nations in Canada) constructed homes to conform to their needs and environment. Housing for some tribal groups was permanent, while other residences reflected the need to relocate, often to adjust for a harvest season or to follow a source of food. Housing styles reflected these needs. Significance Native American housing is frequently assumed to be represented by one or two well-known styles such as the teepee or pueblo. While these do reflect distinct tribal designs, they are not all inclusive and students should be exposed to a...
Transatlantic Trade, A Symbiotic Relationship
Background Crates full of rice slip and slide across the floorboards as the ship rocks back and forth. The ship looks insignificant in the vastness of the ocean. Air scented with tobacco wafts through the cracks in the ceiling of the hold. A small cry breaks with the crashing of the waves as child treated like another barrel or crate full of cargo wonders about his fate. These are the sights, smells, and sounds of the transatlantic trading routes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Highly profitable triangular trade routes were established between Europe, Africa, and...
Examining Antebellum Elections
Aim What can the statistics tell us about the rise and fall of the second two-party system? How did the breakdown of this system contribute to the onset of the Civil War? Overview The purpose of this lesson is to examine the antebellum era through the lens of elections and electoral politics. Although an “era of good feeling” had followed the War of 1812, signs of political dissension were appearing as early as the presidential election of 1824. The issues contested in elections and debated in the legislative sessions from 1824 to 1861 were critical ones: the direction that the...
Celebrating Labor Day
Essential Question To what extent have the conditions of American workers improved over the past 100 years? Background After the Civil War, the United States witnessed an accelerating movement of people westward, a rapidly increasing number of immigrants, and the large growth of urban areas. Along with these trends, the massive changes in how corporations were organized and operated and the growth of the labor movement during this period wrought significant changes in American life. The right to organize, to bargain for wages and working conditions, the equitable distribution...
George Pullman: His Impact on the Railroad Industry, Labor, and American Life in the Nineteenth Century
Background George Mortimer Pullman was an influential industrialist of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company. His innovations brought comfort and luxury to railroad travel in the 1800s with the introduction of sleeping cars, dining cars, and parlor cars. Like other industrialists of the period Pullman built a company town near his factory to accommodate his workers’ housing needs. He advertised it as a model community which offered his workers modern amenities in a beautiful setting. By 1890, the Pullman Palace Car Company was operating 2,135...
Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England
Background Wampanoags Much of what is known about early Wampanoag history comes from archaeological evidence, the Wampanoag oral tradition (much of which has been lost), and documents created by seventeenth-century English colonists. The Wampanoag people have lived in southeastern New England for thousands of years. In 1600 there were as many as 12,000 Wampanoag who lived in forty villages. Both oral tradition and archaeological evidence suggest that Indigenous peoples lived in the area for 10,000 years. Wampanoag means “People of the Dawn” in the Algonquian language. There...
Early Encounters between Native Americans and Europeans
Background Early European explorers to the Americas likely experienced emotions including awe at the vast “new” environment, amazement at meeting “others,” the thrill of the unknown, concern for personal safety, desire for personal reward, and longing for their homeland and those left behind. Written and pictorial records attributed to Europeans provide the bulk of the records of these early travels. European impressions of Native peoples as well as Native impressions of Europeans are frequently framed in the narratives of the explorers. Examination of these records indicates...
"Contagious Liberty": Women in the Revolutionary Age
Background The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these changes in a letter to his wife Abigail. He wrote, "We have been told that that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government everywhere. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to the Masters. But your Letter was the first...
America’s First Ladies on Twentieth-Century Issues
Unit Overview Over the course of three to four lessons the students will analyze five primary source documents. These documents are the abridged transcripts of speeches by five of our country’s first ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Hillary Clinton. All of the speeches address the subject of rights: women’s rights, human rights, or both. Students will closely analyze these primary sources with the purpose of not only understanding the literal message but also inferring the more subtle messages. Students’ understanding will be determined...
Eleanor Roosevelt on Democracy and Citizenship
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. In three lessons students will interact with readings of excerpted documents to develop an understanding of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a humanitarian devoted to a strong democracy with educated citizens. Students will...
Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady for Social Justice: A Common Core Unit (Grades 9–12)
Objectives Students will be asked to read and analyze primary and secondary sources about Eleanor Roosevelt and the work she did to support social justice issues both in the United States and around the world. They will look at the role of first lady and see how Mrs. Roosevelt expanded that role to influence the political, social, and economic issues of the twentieth century. Students will increase their literacy skills as outlined in the Common Core Standards as they explore the social justice actions taken by Eleanor Roosevelt, which at times changed the course of world...
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address
Unit Objective This lesson on President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, January 17, 1961, is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate this knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core State Standards....
JFK’s Inaugural Address
Unit Objective This lesson on President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate this knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core Standards. Through this step-by-step process,...
The First Inaugural Address of George Washington
Unit Objectives This lesson on the First Inaugural Address of George Washington is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate this knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core State Standards. Through...
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Unit Objective This lesson on Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Students will demonstrate this knowledge by writing summaries of selections from the original document (and related documents) and, by the end of the unit, articulating their understanding of the complete document by answering questions in an argumentative writing style to fulfill the Common Core Standards. Through this...
World War II: Posters and Propaganda
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. The lessons are built around the use of textual and visual evidence and critical thinking skills. Overview Over the course of three lessons the students will analyze a secondary source document and primary source documents in the form of propaganda posters produced to support the United States war effort during World War II. These period...
National Security, Isolationism, and the Coming of World War II
Unit Overview The two decades following the end of "The Great War" witnessed significant changes in American economic, social, and cultural life. The affluence and optimism of the 1920s were tempered by memories of the war and an underlying fear of being dragged into another costly and deadly European crisis. These concerns about national security were reflected in increasingly isolationist rhetoric and a rash of neutrality-focused legislation. As dark clouds of war returned in the 1930s, while some Americans called for an enlarged military to defend both the US and endangered...
Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugural Addresses
Objective This lesson on President Lincoln’s two inaugural addresses is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any material. Although this lesson is designed for high school students, middle school students could certainly handle it by moving more slowly through the process of the lesson, adding more modeling of the expectations for both graphic organizers,...
My Brother Sam Is Dead
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Overview Over the course of five lessons the students will compare and contrast some of the events and people that had a major impact on the beginning of the American Revolution. The comparisons will be made between the...
The Virginia Colony
Objective In presenting to students documents dating from the earliest European contact with the Americas, teachers are faced with problems of accessibility. The language is often daunting, and the relevance for students of American history sometimes seems remote. An examination of the history of the Virginia Colony can help students and teachers overcome these obstacles. Documents provide students with an account of the earliest history of the colony that is unparalleled in its depiction of desperate brutality in the colony’s founding. In addition, the spelling, language,...
Colonial America: Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, and Thanksgiving
Click here to download this three-lesson unit.
The Boston Massacre (Grades 4–6)
View the engraving The Bloody Massacre in King Street in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. The lessons are built around the use of textual and visual evidence and critical thinking skills. Overview In this lesson, students will be asked to learn about the Boston Massacre and to analyze Paul Revere’s depiction of the event in...
The United States Constitution: Federalists v. Anti-Federalists
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Lesson 1 Objective Today students will participate as members of a critical thinking group and "read like a detective" in order to analyze the arguments made by the Federalists in favor of ratifying the new US Constitution...
American Symbols: The Flag, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Seal
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. The lessons are built around the use of visual evidence and critical thinking skills. Students will understand the significance of several iconic American symbols: the Flag of the United States of America, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Seal of the United States. The iconic symbols of America are those objects that create an...
The French and Indian War
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Overview In this unit students will develop a thorough knowledge of the French and Indian War through several primary documents. These documents will teach the students about specific aspects of the French and Indian War...
The National Bank Debate
Objective This lesson is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. This activity can be used in most US history, economics, or civics classrooms. I would recommend that this lesson/unit in its current form be used in 11th- and 12th-grade classes. The document analysis templates ( In His...
The Preamble to the US Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Declaration of Independence
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Over the course of three lessons the students will analyze text from three documents defining American democracy: the Preamble to the United States Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the second section of the...
The Evolution of the US Constitution: The Preambles to the Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution
Objective This lesson plan is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Overview Students will have the opportunity to read, interpret, discuss, and compare portions of the Articles of Confederation and two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution. They will use selected content of...
The Mexican-American War: Arguments for and against Going to War
Unit Overview Over the course of three lessons the students will analyze two primary source documents that represent two different points of view on the Mexican-American War. The first document is a speech delivered by then President James K. Polk justifying America’s war with Mexico and asking the United States Congress for a declaration of war. The second document is a speech by Congressman Joshua Giddings during the debate in the House of Representatives that questions the President’s motives for and handling of the coming conflict. Students will closely read and analyze...
Going to the Moon: Science Fiction v. Science History
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical and literary significance. Through a step-by-step process, students will acquire the skills to analyze any primary or secondary source material. Overview Over the course of four lessons the students will explore humanity’s quest to travel to the moon. They will analyze and write about President Kennedy’s speech from 1962 that urged a commitment by the...
Showing results 1 - 50