Lesson Plans

101 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
Learning the Blues

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

Grade Range
9-12
What's in a Picture? An Introduction to Subject in the Visual Arts

When you visit an art museum and enter one of the halls filled with paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures your eye falls on the image closest to you and you wonder, "What is that picture about?" This lesson plan focuses on helping students to answer that question by investigating the of works of art. This lesson plan will provide a guide for gathering clues embedded in works of art, as well as an introduction to searching for the underlying meaning and messages that are present in many works of art. Students will work, step by step, through the layers of meaning, delving more deeply into these layers with each work as they progress through the lesson.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 2: How to Win a World War

For most of 1942, the Grand Alliance between the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union was on the defensive. Whether it could hold together, or whether the Soviet Union would even remain in the conflict, was uncertain. This lesson plan examines the tensions and the sources of ultimate cohesion within the Grand Alliance during the period when eventual victory seemed uncertain.

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
6-12
“Every Day We Get More Illegal” by Juan Felipe Herrera

This lesson plan is the third in the “Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community” series. It provides a video of the United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, reading the poem “Every Day We Get More Illegal” and a companion lesson with a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.

Grade Range
9-12
Jazz and World War II: A Rally to Resistance, A Catalyst for Victory

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 2: The Debate in Congress on the Sedition Act

What provisions in the U.S. Constitution are relevant to the debate over the Sedition Act? For this lesson, students will read brief excerpts from actual debates in the House of Representatives as the legislators attempted to work with the version of the bill "Punishment of Crime" (later known as the Sedition Act) already passed by the Senate.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 4: The New Order for "Greater East Asia"

For American diplomacy, the war against Japan was not just about the destruction of Japanese supremacy in the Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia. The ultimate issue was just what would replace Japan's imperial design of a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." This lesson plan focuses on two major postwar problems—the future of China and (using French Indochina as a test case) the future of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia.

Grade Range
6-8
Investigating Jack London's White Fang: Nature and Culture Detectives

In White Fang, Jack London sought to trace the “development of domesticity, faithfulness, love, morality, and all the amenities and virtues.” In this lesson, students explore images from the Klondike and read White Fang closely to learn how to define and differentiate the terms “nature” and “culture."