Lesson Plans

449 Result(s)
Grade Range
6-12
Dust Bowl Days

Students will be introduced to this dramatic era in our nation's history through photographs, songs and interviews with people who lived through the Dust Bowl.

Grade Range
6-8
The Massachusetts 54th Regiment: Honoring the Heroes

The focus of this lesson is the Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Students will put themselves in the shoes of the men of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment as they read, write, pose, and then create a comic strip about these American heroes.

Grade Range
K-5
Lesson 1. Hopi Place Names

A guided exploration of “Hopitutskwa,” the Hopi homeland, through maps and place names. Using English translations, students make inferences about the Hopi cultural relationship to landscape and place. They examine regional place names of their own home communities and create personal maps by identifying and naming places of importance in their lives.

Grade Range
9-12
The Red Badge of Courage: A New Kind of Courage

In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane presents war through the eyes—and thoughts—of one soldier. The narrative’s altered point of view and stylistic innovations enable a heightened sense of realism while setting the work apart from war stories written essentially as tributes or propaganda.

Grade Range
6-12
Primary and Secondary Sources: Foundations of Historical Research

In this lesson plan, students will learn how to distinguish between primary and secondary sources and how to use them for historical research. The central type of primary sources used in this lesson plan are fugitive slave advertisements: short, concise, detailed, and engaging primary sources that convey the history of slavery and freedom seeking in striking terms.

Grade Range
6-12
Scraping the Sky: Architecture and American History

In 2017, 144 skyscrapers (towers at least 660 feet tall) joined the skylines of 69 cities across the globe—a record that will likely be broken again before the end of 2018. This inquiry-based lesson combines individual investigations of primary resources and visual media with group analysis to investigate the following inquiry: How is the evolution of the American skyscraper related to broader themes of modern U.S. history, economics, and culture?

Grade Range
K-5
Lascaux: La Vie en Caverne!

In this French language lesson, elementary-school students learn about the ways that early humans communicated through art by exploring cave paintings of France and creating their own wall artwork.

Grade Range
9-12
Poetry of The Great War: From Darkness to Light

The historian and literary critic Paul Fussell has noted in The Great War and Modern Memory that, "Dawn has never recovered from what the Great War did to it." With dawn as a common symbol in poetry, it is no wonder that, like a new understanding of dawn itself, a comprehensive body of "World War I Poetry" emerged from the trenches as well.

Grade Range
6-8
After the American Revolution: Free African Americans in the North

About one-third of Patriot soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill were African Americans. Census data also reveal that there were slaves and free Blacks living in the North in 1790 and later years. What were the experiences of African-American individuals in the North in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War?