Lesson Plans

411 Result(s)
Grade Range
9-12
Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context

By studying Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and its critics with a focus on cultural context, students will develop essential analytical tools for navigating this text and for exploring controversies that surround this quintessential American novel.

Grade Range
9-12
Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia

Students learn about the social and historical context of Willa Cather’s My Antonia and work in groups to explore Cather's commentary on fortitude, hard work, faithfulness, and other values that we associate with pioneer life.

Grade Range
9-12
Edith Wharton: War Correspondent

Through reading chapters of Edith Wharton's book, "Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belfort," students will see how an American correspondent recounted World War I for American readers.

Grade Range
6-8
The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry

How shall we judge the contributions to American society of the great financiers and industrialists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries? In this lesson, students explore a variety of primary historical sources to uncover some of the less honorable deeds as well as the shrewd business moves and highly charitable acts of the great industrialists and financiers, men such as Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Grade Range
6-12
Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad

In this lesson, students will comprehend the organizational structure of the Underground Railroad; learn about one of its most famous conductors, Harriet Tubman; and consider ways that heroines and heroes of slavery resistance should be remembered. 

Grade Range
6-12
Visual Records of a Changing Nation

Students have multiple opportunities to analyze photographs captured during a national photography project about local history and changing places to create their own interpretations and exhibits. These materials were developed as part of a partnership between the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Endowment for the Humanities.