All Lessons

Curriculum Unit overview. Changes in voting qualifications and participation, the election of Andrew Jackson, and the formation of the Democratic Party—due largely to the organizational skills of Martin Van Buren—all contributed to making the election of 1828 and Jackson’s presidency a watershed in the evolution of the American political system. In this unit, students analyze changes in voter participation and regional power, and review archival campaign documents reflecting the dawn of politics as we know it during the critical years from 1824 to 1832.

Lesson 1: The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson: Expansion of the Voting Base
Lesson 2: The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson: Changes in Voting Participation
Lesson 3: The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson: Territorial Expansion and the Shift of Power
Lesson 4: The 1828 Campaign of Andrew Jackson: Issues in the Election of 1828 (and Beyond)

Curriculum unit. By examining Lincoln's three most famous speeches—the Gettysburg Address and the First and Second Inaugural Addresses—in addition to a little known fragment on the Constitution, union, and liberty, students trace what these documents say regarding the significance of union to the prospects for American self-government.

Lesson 1: Fragment on the Constitution and Union (1861)—The Purpose of the American Union
Lesson 2: The First Inaugural Address (1861)—Defending the American Union
Lesson 3: The Gettysburg Address (1863)—Defining the American Union
Lesson 4: The Second Inaugural Address (1865)—Restoring the American Union

Fully one-third of Patriot soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill were African Americans. Census data also reveal that there were slaves and free Blacks living in the North in 1790 and after. What do we know about African-American communities in the North in the years after the American Revolution?

Late in 1917, the War Department created two all-black infantry divisions. The 93rd Infantry Division received unanimous praise for its performance in combat, fighting as part of France’s 4th Army. In this lesson, students combine their research in a variety of sources, including firsthand accounts, to develop a hypothesis evaluating contradictory statements about the performance of the 92nd Infantry Division in World War I.

About one-third of Patriot soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill were African Americans. Census data also reveal that there were slaves and free Blacks living in the North in 1790 and later years. What were the experiences of African-American individuals in the North in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War?

When children hear, write and recite poetry, they understand more deeply the qualities of verse — the importance of sound, compactness, internal integrity, imagination, and line. Working collaboratively on poetry provides a safe structure for student creativity.

Curiculum Unit overview. The youngest and newest writers often have a deep interest in the origin of writing itself. These lessons will follow the history of our alphabet.

Lesson 1: The Alphabet is Historic: The Phoenicians and the Beginnings of the Alphabet
Lesson 2: The Alphabet is Historic: The Greek Alphabet: more familiar than you think!
Lesson 3: The Alphabet is Historic: The Roman Alphabet is our Alphabet
Lesson 4: The Alphabet is Historic: The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, and Us

Curriculum unit overview. This four-lesson curriculum unit will examine the nature of what Winston Churchill called the "Grand Alliance" between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union in opposition to the aggression of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Lesson 1: How “Grand” and “Allied” was the Grand Alliance?
Lesson 2: How to Win a World War
Lesson 3: Victory and the New Order in Europe
Lesson 4: The New Order for “Greater East Asia”

Curriculum Unit overview. The decision of Britain's North American colonies to rebel against the Mother Country was an extremely risky one. In this unit, consisting of three lesson plans, students will learn about the diplomatic and military aspects of the American War for Independence.

Lesson 1: The War in the North, 1775-1778
Lesson 2: The War in the South, 1778-1781
Lesson 3: Ending the War, 1783

Students examine the relationship of poetic form and content, shaped by alliteration, consonance, repetition, and rhythm, in two poems about fatherhood: Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz."

In this lesson plan, students will learn about the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. In the process, they will learn about Chinese culture, as well as improve reading, writing, and researching skills

This lesson focuses on one American Indian Nation, the Anishinabe, also known as the Ojibwe, Ojibway, or Chippewa Indians. Students will learn how to conduct a research project on different historical, geographical, and cultural aspects of this Native American group.

This lesson concentrates on Anne Frank as a writer. After a look at Anne Frank the adolescent, and a consideration of how the experiences of growing up shaped her composition of the Diary, students explore some of the writing techniques Anne invented for herself and practice those techniques with material drawn from their own lives.

Debate the relationship between individual rights and the rule of law with a philosopher condemned to death.

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was the hub of a rich civilization that dominated the region of modern-day Mexico at the time the Spanish forces arrived. In this lesson, students will learn about the history and culture of the Aztecs and discover why their civilization came to an abrupt end.

Learn about the checks and balances system of the three branches of the U.S. government.

After encountering visually stunning examples of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and engaging with the literary conventions of Anglo-Saxon poetry, students will be prepared to study Beowulf. Dispelling stereotypes about the so-called “dark ages,” this lesson helps students learn about the production of early manuscripts and the conventions of Anglo-Saxon poetry, solve online riddles, and write riddles of their own.

Curriculum Unit overview. More Americans lost their lives in the Civil War than in any other conflict. How did the United States arrive at a point at which the South seceded and some families were so fractured that brother fought brother?

Lesson 1: Factory vs. Plantation in the North and South
Lesson 2: People and Places in the North and South
Lesson 3: A Debate Against Slavery
Lesson 4: Life Before the Civil War
Lesson 5: Women's Lives Before the Civil War

Using the life of Davy Crockett as a model, students learn the characteristics of tall tales and how these stories reflect their historical moment. The lesson culminates with students writing a tall tale of their own.

Reading Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess,” students will explore the use of dramatic monologue as a poetic form, where the speaker often reveals far more than intended.

Students learn the rules and conventions of haiku, study examples by Japanese masters, and create haiku of their own.

By studying paintings from the Cave of Lascaux and other caves in France, students will discover that pictures can be a way of communicating beliefs and ideas and can give us clues today about what life was like long ago.

French Language and World Literature classes will study the works of 19th century poet Charles Baudelaire and will learn about the connections between the Romantic Movement and themes of 21st century popular culture.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was written during this time of great change. This lesson plan, the first part of a two-part lesson, helps to set the historical, social, cultural, and economic context of Gilman's story.

Students explore Lewis Carroll’s imaginative visions of childhood, captured in his photography and in the words and art of his Alice in Wonderland stories. Students also compare and contrast Carroll’s Victorian view of childhood to that of Romantic poet and printer William Blake.

Through close reading and textual analysis of Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel about the British colonization of Nigeria, students learn how oral, linguistic, and literary strategies are used to present one’s own story and history through literature.

This lesson plan compares the main characteristics of the heroine in several versions of the Cinderella tale to help students understand connections between a story’s main character and the plot’s outcome.

Drawing on the resources of the Library of Congress's Printed Ephemera Collection, this lesson helps students experience the news as the colonists heard it: by means of broadsides, notices written on disposable, single sheets of paper that addressed virtually every aspect of the American Revolution.

In 1776 Tom Paine, an obscure immigrant, published a small pamphlet that ignited independence in America by shifting the political landscape of the patriot movement from reform within the British imperial system to independence from it. This lesson looks at Paine and at some of the ideas presented in Common Sense, such as national unity, natural rights, the illegitimacy of the monarchy and of hereditary aristocracy, and the necessity for independence and the revolutionary struggle.

When most people think of the Civil Rights Movement in America, they think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. But "the Movement" achieved its greatest results due to the competing strategies and agendas of diverse individuals. This unit presents the views of several important black leaders who shaped the debate over how to achieve freedom and equality in our nation.

Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance
Lesson 2: Black Separatism or the Beloved Community? Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The delegates at the 1787 Convention faced a challenge as arduous as those who worked throughout the 1780s to initiate reforms to the American political system. In this unit, students will examine the roles that key American founders played in creating the Constitution, and the challenges they faced in the process.

Lesson 1: The Road to the Constitutional Convention
Lesson 2: The Question of Representation at the 1787 Convention
Lesson 3: Creating the Office of the Presidency

To what shared principles did the Founding Fathers appeal as they struggled to reach a compromise in the Constitutional Convention? In this lesson, students will learn how the Founding Fathers debated then resolved their differences in the Constitution. Learn through their own words how the Founding Fathers created “a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise."

Heavily influenced by social and scientific theories, including those of Darwin, writers of naturalism described—usually from a detached or journalistic perspective—the influence of society and surroundings on the development of the individual. In the following lesson plan, students will learn the key characteristics that comprise American literary naturalism as they explore London's "To Build a Fire" and Crane's "The Open Boat."

See how the rhetoric of women’s rights evolved from the “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 to the suffragist arguments that finally prevailed.

Curriculum Unit overview. American foreign policy continues to resonate with the issues surrounding the debate over U.S. entry into the League of Nations-collective security versus national sovereignty, idealism versus pragmatism, the responsibilities of powerful nations, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals, the idea of America. Understanding the debate over the League and the consequences of its ultimate failure provides insight into international affairs in the years since the end of the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students read the words and listen to the voices of some central participants in the debate over the League of Nations.

Lesson 1: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: League of Nations Basics
Lesson 2: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: Disagreement Over the League
Lesson 3: The Debate in the United States over the League of Nations: Five Camps: From Voices of Consent to Voices of Dissent

Students will listen to a brief biography, view photographs of the March on Washington, hear a portion of King's I Have a Dream speech, and discuss what King's words mean to them.

Students will be introduced to this dramatic era in our nation's history through photographs, songs and interviews with people who lived through the Dust Bowl.

We are naturally curious about the lives (and deaths) of authors, especially those, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce, who have left us with so many intriguing mysteries. But does biographical knowledge add to our understanding of their works? And if so, how do we distinguish between the accurate detail and the rumor, between truth and slander? In this lesson, students become literary sleuths, attempting to separate biographical reality from myth. They also become careful critics, taking a stand on whether extra-literary materials such as biographies and letters should influence the way readers understand a writer's texts.

Through reading chapters of Edith Wharton's book, Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belfort, students will see how an American correspondent recounted World War I for American readers.

This lesson plan explores the characteristics of the nonsense poem as developed by British poet Edward Lear and focuses on Lear’s well-known poem “The Owl and the Pussy Cat.” Students learn to recognize poetic devices such as rhyme, syllabification, and meter, and figures of speech such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, and personification, by analyzing nonsense poems and writing one of their own.

This lesson introduces students to Egyptian pyramids and to artifacts and archaeology in general. Through a discussion of the size, scale, and purpose of pyramids, students learn how these structures tell audiences of today about the peoples of ancient Egypt. An extension lesson allows students to consider what messages modern monuments provide about present-day cultures.

This lesson introduces students to Egyptian art, culture, and history through the ancient tomb paintings and mythological figures of the Book of the Dead.

Curriculum Unit overview. The presidential election of 1824 represents a watershed in American politics. The collapse of the Federalist Party and the illness of the "official candidate" of the Democratic-Republicans led to a slate of candidates who were all Democratic-Republicans. This led to the end of the Congressional Caucus system for nominating candidates, and eventually, the development of a new two-party system in the United States. In this unit, students will read an account of the election from the Journal of the House of Representatives, analyze archival campaign materials, and use an interactive online activity to develop a better understanding of the election of 1824 and its significance.

Lesson 1: The Election Is in the House: The Denouement
Lesson 2: The Election Is in the House: 1824: The Candidates and the Issues
Lesson 3: The Election Is in the House: Was There a Corrupt Bargain?

The earliest writing systems evolved independently and at roughly the same time in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but current scholarship suggests that Mesopotamia’s writing appeared first. That writing system, invented by the Sumerians, emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. This lesson plan is designed to help students appreciate the parallel development and increasing complexity of writing and civilization in Mesopotamia.

By rendering aspects of Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" into carefully considered graphical forms, students learn to appreciate elements of characterization, setting, and plot in a manner that engages them actively in the production of meaning.

Curriculum Unit overview. Why is it that when we walk into a museum so many people gravitate towards the same images? In this curriculum unit students will be introduced to composition in the visual arts, including design principals, such as balance, symmetry, and repetition, as well as one of the formal elements: line.

Lesson 1: Shaping the View: Composition Basics
Lesson 2: Shaping the View: Symmetry and Balance
Lesson 3: Repeat After Me: Repetition in the Visual Arts
Lesson 4: Follow the Leader: Line in the Visual Arts

Explore connections between family history and the history of the world around us.

In this lesson plan, students read and learn to understand fairy tales in order to recognize their universal literary structures and themes. They compare similar fairy tales from different cultural and geographic regions of the world to see over-arching plots featururing conflicts between good and evil and imagery and motifs that are repeated across many cultures and time periods.

The lessons in this unit are designed to help your students recognize how people of different cultures and time periods have used cloth-based art forms to pass down their traditions and history.

This lesson shows students how broadly the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 empowered the federal government—particularly the President—and asks students to investigate how FDR promoted the program in speeches and then in photographs.

The 1930s were an era of profound change in America that especially affected the relationship between the American people and the federal government. It was in these tumultuous times that Franklin D. Roosevelt steered the country through economic perils and major social changes.

After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to summarize the contents of the First Amendment and give an example of speech that is protected by the Constitution and speech that is not protected by the Constitution.

Known as both a Southern and a Catholic writer, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) wrote stories that are hard to forget. In this lesson, students will explore these dichotomies—and challenge them—while closely reading and analyzing "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

Learn how writer Zora Neale Hurston incorporated and transformed black folklife in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. By exploring Hurston’s own life history and collection methods, listening to her WPA recordings of folksongs and folktales, and comparing transcribed folk narrative texts with the plot and themes of the novel, students will learn about the crucial role of oral folklore in Hurston’s written work.

The famous Great Wall of China, which was built to keep the China’s horse-riding neighbors at bay, extends more than 2,000 kilometers across China, from Heilongjiang province by Korea to China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang. This lesson will investigate the building of the Great Wall during the Ming Dynasty, and will utilize the story of the wall as a tool for introducing students to one period in the rich history of China.

This unit on French language and culture focuses on the family and keeps the lessons simple and age-appropriate. Students will learn about French families and gain a preliminary knowledge of the French language, learning the French names for various family members.

Curriculum Unit overview. In 1845 Frederick Douglass published what was to be the first of his three autobiographies: the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. As the title suggests, Douglass wished not only to highlight the irony that a land founded on freedom would permit slavery to exist within its midst, but also to establish that he, an American slave with no formal education, was the sole author of the work.

Lesson 1: From Courage to Freedom: The Reality behind the Song
Lesson 2: From Courage to Freedom: Slavery’s Dehumanizing Effects
Lesson 3: From Courage to Freedom

Test the arguments on both sides in the case that shook the foundations of faith and science.

Students compare imagined travel experiences of their own with the actual experiences of 19th-century pioneers.

Study Shakespeare's Hamlet in the context of Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge. The lesson includes activities in which students compare the text of Hamlet to the interpretations of several modern filmmakers.

King Hammurabi ruled Babylon, located along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, from 1792-1750 BCE however, today he is most famous for a series of judgments inscribed on a large stone stele and dubbed Hammurabi's Code. In this lesson students will learn about the contents of the Code, and what it tells us about life in Babylonia in the 18th century BCE.

Many English speakers are familiar with the Sanskrit word karma, which made its way into the language during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is often used in English to encapsulate the idea that "what goes around comes around." A more complete understanding of the word is brought to life in the stories known collectively as the Jataka Tales. This lesson will introduce students to the concepts of samsara and karma, as well as to the Jataka Tales.

Compare the storyteller?s voice with that of the writer who was a contemporary of Whitman and Douglass.

The lessons in this unit are designed to help your students recognize how people of different cultures and time periods have used cloth-based art forms (quilts) to pass down their traditions and history.

Curriculum Unit overview. Color has a tremendous effect on the way in which we perceive the tone, the story, or the message of art works. In this curriculum unit students will be introduced to the importance and effect of color in the visual arts.

Lesson 1: In Depth with the Full Spectrum
Lesson 2: Color Me Happy: Color, Mood, and Tone

Students reflect on what the presidential inauguration has become and what it has been by examining archival materials.

Using EDSITEment's vast online resources, you and your students read the correspondence of the famous, the infamous, and the ordinary and use these letters as a starting point for discussion of and practice in the conventions and purposes of letter writing.

As a class, students create an imagined travel experience and then compare it with the actual experiences of 19th-century pioneers.

How did the English picture the native peoples of America during the early phases of colonization of North America? This lesson plan will enable students to interact with written and visual accounts of this critical formative period at the end of the 16th century, when the English view of the New World was being formulated, with consequences that we are still seeing today.

Find out what it might feel like to grow up in an Asian, African, or Latin American country.