Lesson Plans

411 Result(s)
Grade Range
K-5
What Was Columbus Thinking?

Students read excerpts from Columbus's letters and journals, as well as recent considerations of his achievements in order to reflect on the motivations behind Columbus's explorations.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 1: The Campaign of 1840: The Whigs, the Democrats, and the Issues

Many accounts portray the campaign of 1840 as almost exclusively image-based. This lesson offers students the opportunity to reflect on the nature of the campaign. Though intended for the teacher, all or part of the following background information may be useful for some students.

Grade Range
9-12
George Orwell's Essay on his Life in Burma: "Shooting An Elephant"

In addition to being an accomplished novelist, George Orwell was also an experienced essayist. Among his most powerful essays is the 1931 autobiographical essay "Shooting an Elephant," which Orwell based on his experience as a police officer in colonial Burma. Through close reading of this piece, students will be engage deeply with the text and discuss the major literary tools present in Orwell's writing.

Grade Range
9-12
Lesson 4: FDR and the Lend-Lease Act

This lesson shows students how broadly the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 empowered the federal government—particularly the President—and asks students to investigate how FDR promoted the program in speeches and then in photographs.

Grade Range
6-12
Lesson Four: Writing a Diplomatic Toast

For the curriculum unit The Diplomacy Challenge. Lesson Four. In this lesson students apply the intelligence gathered at the intelligence briefing and through their primary source analysis to prepare a toast for one Early Modern empire.

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
6-8
Anne Frank: One of Hundreds of Thousands

Drawing upon the online archives of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, this lesson helps students to put the events described by Anne Frank into historical perspective, and also serves as a broad overview of the Nazi conquest of Europe during World War II. After surveying the experiences of various countries under Nazi occupation, the lesson ends with activities related specifically to the Netherlands and Anne Frank.