Lesson Plans

407 Result(s)
Grade Range
6-12
Civil Rights and the Cold War

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.

Grade Range
6-8
Metaphorical Gold: Mining the Gold Rush for Stories

Explore the Alaskan Gold Rush by "mining" EDSITEment resources for primary texts and period photographs. Just as writer Jack London discovered "metaphorical gold" in the Yukon, students can search several online databases for period details that will enhance their own narratives based on the Gold Rush era.

Grade Range
K-5
De Colores

This lesson plan is designed for young learners at the beginner or beginner-intermediate level of proficiency in Spanish. The activities in this lesson plan will help students learn ten colors in Spanish and also provide them with practice to use them in context.

Grade Range
K-5
Morality “Tales” East and West: European Fables and Buddhist Jataka Tales

Fables, such as those attributed to Aesop, are short narratives populated by animals who behave like humans, and which convey lessons to the listener. Jataka Tales are often short narratives which tell the stories of the lives of the Buddha before he reached Enlightenment. In this lesson students will be introduced to both Aesop’s fables and to a few of the Jataka Tales, and through these stories will gain an understanding of one genre of storytelling: morality tales.

Grade Range
9-12
African-American Soldiers After World War I: Had Race Relations Changed?

In this lesson, students view archival photographs, combine their efforts to comb through a database of more than 2,000 archival newspaper accounts about race relations in the United States, and read newspaper articles written from different points of view about post-war riots in Chicago.

Grade Range
9-12
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy

In this lesson, students explore the historical context of  Walt Whitman's concept of "democratic poetry" by reading  his poetry and prose and by examining daguerreotypes taken circa 1850.  Next, students will compare the poetic concepts and techniques behind Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" and Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again," and have an opportunity to apply similar concepts and techniques in creating a poem from their own experience.

Grade Range
6-8
A Story of Epic Proportions: What makes a Poem an Epic?

Some of the most the most essential works of literature in the world are examples of epic poetry, such as The Odyssey and Paradise Lost. This lesson introduces students to the epic poem form and to its roots in oral tradition.

Grade Range
6-8
Lesson 4: Life Before the Civil War

Students demonstrate their knowledge of life before the Civil War, with an emphasis on differences between the North and South.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 3: From Courage to Freedom

Frederick Douglass's 1845 narrative of his life is a profile in both moral and physical courage. In the narrative Douglass openly illustrates and attacks the misuse of Christianity as a defense of slavery. He also reveals the turning point of his life: his spirited physical defense of himself against the blows of a white "slave-breaker."