In this lesson, students learn the craft of screenwriting, engage in historical research to learn how filmmakers combine scholarship and imagination to bring historical figures to life, and reflect on how cinematic storytelling can shape our view of the past.
Introduce students to the work of women filmmakers in early Hollywood with this comprehensive lesson plan developed by the American Film Institute. This curriculum has three objectives: for students to develop research skills by using the AFI catalog and other online databases; for students to critically analyze the film “Shoes” by Lois Weber (1916); and for students to explore the important role that women played in the development of the motion picture industry.
Clues to Walt Whitman's effort to create a new and distinctly American form of verse may be found in his Notebooks, now available online from the American Memory Collection. In an entry to be examined in this lesson, Whitman indicated that he wanted his poetry to explore important ideas of a universal scope (as in the European tradition), but in authentic American situations and settings using specific details with direct appeal to the senses.
Relive the decisions that led to the attack on Fort Sumter to determine whether Lincoln aimed to preserve peace or provoke the hostilities that led to the Civil War.
In this lesson, students explore the First Industrial Revolution in early nineteenth-century America. Through simulation activities and the examination of primary historical materials, students learn how changes in the workplace and less expensive goods led to the transformation of American life.
Students analyze archival cartoons, posters, magazine humor, newspaper articles and poems that reflect the deeply entrenched attitudes and beliefs the early crusaders for women’s rights had to overcome.
The Magna Carta served to lay the foundation for the evolution of parliamentary government and subsequent declarations of rights in Great Britain and the United States. In attempting to establish checks on the king's powers, this document asserted the right of "due process" of law.
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun provides a compelling and honest look into one family's aspirations to move to another Chicago neighborhood and the thunderous crash of a reality that raises questions about for whom the "American Dream" is accessible.
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.
