Students examine and listen to a variety of forms of music to learn about the cultural, geographic, and stylistic diversity available within the United States.
After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to summarize the contents of the First Amendment and give examples of speech that is protected by the Constitution and speech that is not protected by the Constitution.
Help clarify the nature of symbols for your students as they study the Statue of Liberty, complete research on a national symbol, and use their research to communicate a message of their own.
Help your students understand the development of the Declaration as both a historical process and a compositional process through the use of role play and creative writing.
Through these lessons, students learn to identify and describe the various roles and responsibilities of the President of the United States and their own roles as citizens of a democracy.
Using archival material, students will associate Francis Scott Key's Star Spangled Banner with historic events and recognize the sentiments those words inspired. Students will explore the symbolic nature of the American flag.
Students study the interaction between environment and culture as they learn about three vastly different indigenous groups in a game-like activity that uses vintage photographs, traditional stories, photos of artifacts, and recipes.
This lesson will focus on the views of the founders as expressed in primary documents from their own time and in their own words. Students will see that many of the major founders opposed slavery as contrary to the principles of the American Revolution. Students will also gain a better understanding of the views of many founders, even those who owned slaves – including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – who looked forward to a time when slavery would no longer mar the American Republic.