226 items
Essential Questions What constitutes great presidential leadership? How did Eisenhower demonstrate great leadership through his support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) and his warning about the growth of the Military-Industrial...
Early European Imperial Colonization of the New World
Introduction By the early to mid-seventeenth century, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands were all competing for colonies and trade around the world. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, explorers, conquerors, missionaries...
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...
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...
Enslaved African Americans and Expressions of Freedom
Overview Students will examine African American slave spirituals, a painting, and a personal narrative to analyze the underlying messages of these materials. Materials The Old Plantation (painting) can be seen at: http://www.history...
Environmentalism, Love Canal, and Lois Gibbs, 1953-1997
Click here to download this four-lesson unit
Evaluating Lyndon B. Johnson’s Character and Efforts during the Civil Rights Era
Background Information In 1969 Thomas Baker conducted an interview with Roy Wilkins, executive directory of the NAACP, based on Wilkins’s experiences with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. This abridged version of the...
Events at Sand Creek, 1864
Historical Context When the Civil War broke out, John Milton Chivington, a missionary in Kansas, was offered a commission as a chaplain but refused it as he wanted to fight. As a result he was given a commission as a major in the 1st...
Every Four Years: Introducing Presidential Elections
Lesson Overview The students will examine, explain, and evaluate Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution for specific information concerning the eligibility requirements and election process for the office of President of the...
Every Four Years: Qualifications for the Office of President and Electing the President
Overview Students will examine aspects of Article II of the Constitution for specific information related to the requirements for and method of electing the president. Materials (attached) KWL Chart (PDF) The United States...
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...
Examining Women’s Roles through Primary Sources and Literature
Essential Question: How were the ever-changing roles of women in American society chronicled? Background Joseph Heller writes in his book The Feminization of Quest-Romance that "American Literature equates the very essence of what it...
Explorers and Exploration in Early American History: Shifting the Narrative
Click to download this five-lesson unit.
Farewell to Manzanar: Japanese Internment Camps During World War II
Background In 1886, after the arrival of Commodore Perry, the Japanese government lifted its ban on emigration and allowed its citizens to move to other countries. In the years after that, however, the United States made it more...
First Day of Integration at Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas
Sources Students Entering School Building , National Park Service Book: Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (1962), or online at Civil Rights Teaching Background Information On the first day of integration at Central High...
Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance....
Framing Soo Hoo Lem Kong
Overview Students will examine immigration documents and interviews in order to describe the experience of Chinese immigrants entering California in the 1900s. Students will use depth and complexity icons as tools to develop higher...
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
View this item in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. 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...
Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
Click to download this five-lesson unit :
Free Speech in US History, 1917-1988
Click here to download the middle school lesson unit. Click here to download the high school lesson unit.
Generations of Chinese in America, 1880s–1940s/1940s–1990s
Click here to download Unit 1. Click here to download Unit 2.
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...
George Washington’s Rules of Civility
Introduction When George Washington was a teenager, he wanted to make a good impression on his elders. Good manners were important to him. He made sure that he knew how by copying Rules of Civility from a French rulebook in his own...
Going to School, Then and Now: Education in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird
Overview The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are both written in the voices of children. While each book gives and unabashed commentary of the social mores of the time and place...
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