Lesson Plan The Decision to Escalate in Vietnam 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to download this three-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source The end of the Vietnam War: conscience, resistance, and reconciliation, 1973 Vietnam was "America’s longest war." While US operations tended to be very limited between 1945 and 1964, escalation in the early months of 1965 eventually led to the deployment of more than 2.5 million military personnel to South...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Cold War in the classroom, 1952 Government and Civics, World History As the Cold War pervaded domestic as well as international spheres, Duck and Cover , an educational film produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration and Archer Productions Inc., showed children how to react in case of a...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Robert F. Kennedy on Vietnam, 1967 Government and Civics, World History On May 15, 1967, CBS broadcast Town Meeting of the World , a program in which Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Governor Ronald Reagan of California answered questions posed by the moderator, Charles Collingwood; students from...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Dinner with the nuclear family, 1950 Art The threat of invasion and subversion in the Cold War era led Americans to seek consensus and conformity, in politics and in culture. The rise of consumer culture in the same period, driven by an economic boom, a population surge, and...
Lesson Plan The Soldier's Experience: Letters from Four American Wars 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this four-lesson unit.
Spotlight on: Primary Source Address to the Nation Announcing Operation Desert Storm, 1991 Government and Civics, World History On January 16, 1991, President George H. W. Bush announced the beginning of the military campaign to end an Iraqi occupation of neighboring Kuwait. The address was broadcast live on radio and television. It was the culmination of five...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Physicists predict a nuclear arms race, 1945 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ This declaration of concern, written after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offers insight into the Manhattan Project, an atomic development program led by the United States. The "Preliminary Statement of the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Discovering a mass grave in Iraq, 2003 Mark Rickert wrote this email while serving as a journalist with the 372nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in Iraq. On this day, he and his group were investigating rumors of a mass grave. The letter is written to his grandfather,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Christmas in Kuwait, 1990 Geography, World History Cpl. Brett G. Coughlin arrived with Delta Company in Saudi Arabia at the port of Al Jubail on September 13, 1990. For the next three months the company trained in the northern desert of Saudi Arabia. By Christmas, its headquarters...
Lesson Plan Singing for Freedom Literature 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Background In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with most non-white families living well below the poverty line. Although African Americans made up nearly half of the state's population, few were...
Lesson Plan Analyzing Protest Songs of the 1960s Background In January 1969, America’s recently elected conservative president Richard Nixon took office, young Americans were engaged in a radical and vivacious counterculture, and a devastating war in Vietnam continued amidst a...
Lesson Plan The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Overview In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience while startling many others who preferred the music of Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in...
Lesson Plan Sounds of Change: The Influence of Jazz on the Beat Generation 9, 10, 11, 12 Time Needed Two class sessions Common Core Standards Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning...
Lesson Plan President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, 1961 Government and Civics 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Click here to download this four-lesson unit.