Lesson Plan Native American Cultures and the Impact of the Boarding Schools 3, 4, 5 Click to download this four-lesson unit.
Lesson Plan Native American Housing Geography 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 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...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A report from Spanish California, 1776 Foreign Languages, Government and Civics Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869 Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ This iconic photograph records the celebration marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad lines at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford, co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad,...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Japanese internment, 1942 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Responding to fears of Japanese spies within the United States, President Roosevelt signed an order authorizing the forced relocation and confinement of more than 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans living in the West....
Lesson Plan Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England Economics, Government and Civics 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 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....
Lesson Plan The Virginia Colony 9, 10 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...
Lesson Plan The French and Indian War Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ 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...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769 Government and Civics This document records that the representatives of the Six Nations, who signed using totems to designate individuals and tribes, received $10,000 as payment from the Penns for land the tribes had ceded in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek War, 1814 On May 12, 1814, Tennessee settler Isaac Stephens wrote to his uncle Henry Mackey in Virginia about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In that battle on March 27, 1814, US Army and Tennessee militia troops under General Andrew...