To what shared principles did the Founding Fathers appeal as they struggled to reach a compromise in the Constitutional Convention? In this lesson, students will learn how the Founding Fathers debated then resolved their differences in the Constitution. Learn through their own words how the Founding Fathers created “a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise."
Using primary documents, this lesson explores how religion aided and hindered the American war effort; specifically, it explores how Anglican loyalists and Quaker pacifists responded to the outbreak of hostilities and how the American revolutionaries enlisted religion in support of the fight for independence.
This lesson highlights the changing relationship between the city center and the suburb in the postwar decades, especially in the 1950s. Students will look at the legislation leading up to and including the Federal Highway Act of 1956. They will also examine documents about the history of Levittown, the most famous and most important of the postwar suburban planned developments.
This lesson introduces students to the history of Hawai'i. Using primary sources, students will learn about the events that led to the annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, as well as its eventual admission into the union as a state and the lasting impacts and legacies of these events.
Trade was critical to Old Babylonia, where many highly prized natural resources were scarce but agricultural goods were in surplus. A vibrant trading system developed, bringing manufactured goods and raw materials from as far as Turkey, and even India, 1500 miles away. Trade became integral to the economy and the culture. In this lesson, students explore the trade industry in Old Babylonia and its far-flung influence.
Witness the unfolding drama of the Constitutional Convention and the contributions of those whom we have come to know as the Founding Fathers. In this lesson, students will become familiar with four important, but relatively unknown, contributors to the U.S. Constitution Convention: Oliver Ellsworth, Alexander Hamilton, William Paterson, and Edmund Randolph.
For many people, Timbuktu is a metaphor for the mysterious, the remote, or the unobtainable. But the Malian city of Timbuktu was, in fact, once a thriving center of commerce and intellectual activity.
In the lessons of this curriculum unit, students will learn about the geography of Mali and the early trade networks that flourished there. They will study how the spread of Islam influenced the cultures and economies along the Niger River. They will find out about the three kingdoms that evolved in ancient and medieval West Africa.
Did changes in state constitutions tend to affect the voting population? In this lesson, students discuss the general trend in the first half of the 19th century to extend the right to vote to more white males.
Did the increased right to vote translate into an increase in the percentage and totals of white males who actually voted? Students will look for connections between the candidacy of Andrew Jackson and trends in voter participation in the presidential election of 1828.
Using primary documents, this lesson aims to introduce students to how the American revolutionaries employed religion in their arguments for independence.
