Lesson Plans

In this lesson, students will learn how to describe painter Thomas Hart Benton’s artistic techniques; identify the roots of country music as well as some of the early performers; and discuss how changes in art and musical style reflect changes in society.

Learning about World War II American efforts helps students gain some perspective regarding the U.S. response to the conflict generated by the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Students examine Washington's ability to handle a wide range of problems during his time as Commander-in-Chief.

In this lesson students examine primary source documents including photographs, film, maps, and essays to learn about Chicago at the turn of the 20th century and Carl Sandburg's famous poem. After examining the poem's use of personification and apostrophe, students write their own pieces about beloved places with Sandburg's poem as a model.

In this lesson, students examine Washington as a military leader and explore some of the difficulties he faced during the Revolutionary War.

Quilts can be works of art as well as stories through pictures. They also tell a story about their creators and about the historical and cultural context of their creation through the choices made in design, material, and content.

One of the most famous political speeches on freedom in the twentieth century was delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union message to Congress. This lesson examines the rhetorical use of "freedom" with the objective of encouraging students to glimpse the broad range of hopes and aspirations that are expressed in the call of—and for—freedom.

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.

In this lesson, students gain a sense of the dramatic effect of FDR's voice on his audience, see the scope of what he was proposing in these first two "Fireside Chats," and make an overall analysis of why the series of speeches were so successful.

In this lesson of the curriculum unit, students reconsider the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I through the lens of archival documents.