Students will read President Madison's War Message (in either an edited/annotated or full-text version) and be given the opportunity to raise questions about its contents.
Explore the ways in which First Ladies were able to influence the country while dealing with the expectations placed on them as women and as partners of powerful men.
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.
Nigerian born Chinua Achebe is one of the world's most well-known and influential contemporary writers. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is an early narrative about the European colonization of Africa told from the point of view of the colonized people.
In this lesson, students will look behind the story at the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that shape the narrative throughout Esperanza Rising. The lesson also invites students to contemplate some of the changes Esperanza undergoes as she grows into a responsible young woman and the contradictions that she experiences.
This lesson plan attempts to dissolve the artificial boundary between domestic and international affairs in the postwar period to show students how we choose to discuss history.
In this lesson, students will examine a preselected set of newspaper articles drawn from the "Chronicling America" website. They will determine the right each article illustrates and the responsibility that comes with that right.
In this lesson, students reflect on the Holocaust from the point of view of those who actively resisted Nazi persecution. Weigh the choices faced by those for whom resistance seemed both futile and the essence of survival.
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.
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.
