Lesson Plan "Contagious Liberty": Women in the Revolutionary Age Government and Civics 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...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836 Government and Civics On March 2, 1836, Texas formally declared its independence from Mexico. The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos, now commonly referred to as the “birthplace of Texas.” Similar to the United States...
Spotlight on: Primary Source "Food Will Win the War," 1917 Economics, World History When most people think of wartime food rationing, they often think of World War II. However, civilians were encouraged to do their part for the war effort during World War I as well. This colorful poster by artist Charles E. Chambers...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inauguration, 1933 Economics, Government and Civics, Literature When Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, the nation was reeling from the Great Depression and was dissatisfied with the previous administration’s reluctance to fight it. Roosevelt declared that...
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...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Supreme Court upholds national prohibition, 1920 Economics, Government and Civics After more than a century of activism, the temperance movement achieved its signal victory with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919. The amendment abolished "the manufacture, sale, or...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Lowell Mill Girls and the factory system, 1840 Economics Lowell, Massachusetts, named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell, was founded in the early 1820s as a planned town for the manufacture of textiles. It introduced a new system of integrated manufacturing to the United States and...
Lesson Plan Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction 7, 8 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....
Lesson Plan Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 7, 8, 9, 10 Click to download this five-lesson unit :