Lesson Plans

411 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
Place-Based Learning: Creating Clio Entries

Clio, partially funded by the NEH, is a free resource allowing users to learn about the history of the landscapes they inhabit, and to contribute to those historical narratives. This lesson plan walks through the steps involved in creating a Clio entry about an historic place or event.

Grade Range
K-5
Anishinaabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa: Culture of an Indian Nation

This Activity focuses on one American Indian Nation, the Anishinaabe, also known as the Ojibwe, Ojibway, or Chippewa Indians. Students will learn how to conduct a research project on different historical, geographical, and cultural aspects of this Native American group.

Grade Range
6-8
Chronicling America: Uncovering a World at War

This lesson provides students with tools to analyze primary source newspaper articles about the Great War (1914–1917) in order to understand public opinion regarding the U.S. entry into the war from multiple perspectives.

Grade Range
6-12
What is History? Timelines and Oral Histories

This lesson plan addresses the ways people learn about events from the past and discusses how historical accounts are influenced by the perspective of the person giving the account. To understand that history is made up of many people’s stories of the past, students interview family members about the same event and compare the ifferent versions, construct a personal history timeline and connect it to larger historical events, and synthesize eyewitness testimony from different sources to create their own "official" account.

Grade Range
6-12
Afro Atlantic: Mapping Journeys

Kerry James Marshall's painting Voyager, depicting two partially obscured Black figures standing aboard a ship, refers to an actual ship, Wanderer, which was among the last slave ships in the United States, illegally transporting more than 400 individuals from West Africa to Georgia in 1858—even though the importation of enslaved people had been banned in 1808. Use the painting as an entry point to discuss the Transatlantic slave trade and introduce students to the NEH-funded database Slave Voyages project. 

Grade Range
9-12
Frontiers on the Big Screen

How does popular culture engage history? In this lesson plan, students will examine The Searchers, one of the most widely acclaimed Western movies of all time, to explore interpretations of race, gender, and family–both in the time period depicted by the film and the time period in which the film was produced.

Grade Range
9-12
Evaluating Eyewitness Reports

Practice working with primary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.

Grade Range
9-12
Building Suburbia: Highways and Housing in Postwar America

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.