Lesson Plans

240 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
In Her Shoes: Lois Weber and the Female Filmmakers Who Shaped Early Hollywood

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. 

Grade Range
9-12
Learning the Blues

Take a virtual field trip to Memphis, Tennessee, and explore the history of the blues.

Grade Range
6-12
Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion

Students weigh the choices Washington faced in the nation’s first Constitutional crisis by following events through his private diary.

Grade Range
6-12
Who Belongs on the Frontier: Cherokee Removal

Cherokee people faced a number of challenges to their sovereignty in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this lesson plan, students examine the geographic, political, and cultural frontiers Cherokees confronted and overcame during this time. 

Grade Range
6-8
Lesson 3: A Debate Against Slavery

Sometimes, people will fight to keep someone else from being treated poorly. Disagreement over slavery was central to the conflict between the North and the South. The nation was deeply divided.

Grade Range
9-12
Lincoln Goes to War

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.

Grade Range
6-12
Lesson 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance

By examining King's famous essay in defense of nonviolent protest, along with two significant criticisms of his direct action campaign, this lesson will help students assess various alternatives for securing civil rights for black Americans in a self-governing society.

Grade Range
6-8
The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry

How shall we judge the contributions to American society of the great financiers and industrialists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries? In this lesson, students explore a variety of primary historical sources to uncover some of the less honorable deeds as well as the shrewd business moves and highly charitable acts of the great industrialists and financiers, men such as Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Grade Range
9-12
Women's Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs

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.