This course is a survey of American History from the Age of Exploration and Discovery to the present. Emphasis is placed on critical and evaluative thinking skills, essay writing, interpretation of original documents, and historiography. This history curriculum is assembled from UC college preparatory courses and students will demonstrate comprehension of a broad body of historical knowledge; express ideas clearly in writing; work with classmates to research an historical issue; interpret and apply data from original documents; identify underrepresented historical viewpoints; write to persuade with evidence; compare and contrast alternate interpretations of an historical figure, event, or trend; explain how an historical event connects to or causes a larger trend or theme; develop essay responses that include a clear, defensible thesis statement and supporting evidence; effectively argue a position on an historical issue; critique and respond to arguments made by others; raise and explore questions about policies, institutions, beliefs, and actions in an historical context; evaluate primary materials, such as historical documents, political cartoons, and first-person narratives; evaluate secondary materials, such as scholarly works or statistical analyses; and assess the historical significance and cultural impact of key literary works (e.g. Common Sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin).

This activity guide accompanies the exhibition America on the Move. It delivers a variety of historical primary-source materials from the exhibition directly to your classroom. Through these documents and activities, students can build a deeper understanding of how transportation shaped American commerce, communities, landscapes, and population migrations.

Guidelines for producing a newspaper set in another period of history which may help deepen children's understanding of the people and events of that time.

This outlines a staff development workshop and offers lessons designed to help students put historical events in context and see them as a part of a larger story. Use of primary resources is the focus -- where to find them, what they are, how to examine them, and how to construct the context to tell the whole story.

This site offers twelve puzzle sets. Each set challenges you with four or five jigsaw puzzles made from images found in the American Memory collections. As each puzzle in the set is completed, a new puzzle will appear...until you have completed all of the puzzles in that set. You will then have a chance to use what you have learned to discover the Big Picture...the theme the images in the set have in common

The New Deal programs and agencies, created under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had a powerful impact on the relationship of government to the people of the United States. Yet a study of New Deal programs often leaves the student with a disconnected list of 'alphabet soup' programs and no real grasp of the impact of the New Deal.

This lesson takes a student through a process of examining primary sources, both photographs and life histories, to develop a sense of the profound impact the Great Depression had on real people’s lives. Then after studying New Deal Programs, students apply what they’ve learned to improve the situations of those people, whose life history interviews they have read. They synthesize the information gathered into an essay which has both an expository and a creative component.

For 10th grade students.

This guide was written to help you bring to life the human struggle that was endured in the Campaign for Vicksburg. The guide can help you bring a complex subject to your students. You and your students will probably come up with new and different ways to see the Park. We hope this guide will give you a few new tools to teach and enlighten your class. After all, the Campaign for Vicksburg was more than generals and maps, it was the common soldier, sailor and civilian who witnessed a lifetime in 47 days. Invite your students to experience those times and see beyond the hills to the people.

In this lesson students will learn about the varying attitudes and definitions of land ownership held by Native and European Americans by studying a variety of primary documents from the nineteenth century. They will learn about how various treaties—the Homestead Act and the Dawes Act—affected both Native and European Americans. Students will discuss these issues in the form of a debate, and will also write journal entries.

The Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina rise abruptly from the Piedmont, the state's central plateau, and include the ranges of the Balsam, Black, Blue Ridge, Great Smoky, and Nantahala Mountains. The region is home to several of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi River. The rugged geography of these mountains delayed the arrival of European settlers to the area, slowed the pace of development, and for many years preserved a distinct regional culture.

While development and change were slow in coming to the Mountain Region, the last half a century has seen a surge in both. This site focuses on the story of Madison County, North Carolina. Listen to members of the community candidly discuss tradition, growth, loss, and balance as you experience the story of change in the North Carolina mountains.

This lesson allows students the opportunity to analyze a document and make assessment and historical prediction based on the text.

This is a teaching unit that leads middle and high school students through the process of critically examining photographs (by Lewis Hine) as historical evidence.

The Civil War through a Child's Eye lesson focuses on the use of historical fiction and primary sources to expand students' perceptions of the Civil War era. Literature and photographic images reflect, communicate, and influence human perspectives of historical events. Specifically, the unit helps students to view the Civil War era through a child’s eye, rather than from an adult perspective.

Following an introduction to the Civil War using photographic, daguerreotype, and non-fiction sources, students read Paul Fleischman’s Bull Run in Readers Theater format. Next, students examine and interpret primary source images of Civil War era children. Then, students reveal their understanding of a child’s perspective in a literary portrait. In sum, this lesson integrates reading, writing, and US history standards.

This course is designed to introduce you to the basic structure of the British Parliament and the organization of its historical documents.

In this lesson, students will read two primary source documents from Documenting the American South, a digital library collection sponsored by the University Library at UNC. One document is Child Labor in the Carolinas, a pamphlet published in 1909 by the National Child Labor Committee exposing the use of child labor in the cotton mills of North Carolina. The other document is Mill News, a weekly newsletter about the Southern cotton industry which was paid for and published by the mill companies themselves. Students will also listen to oral history excerpts from mill workers to gain a third perspective. In a critical analysis, students will identify the audiences for both documents and the motivations and intent of its authors, as well as examine the historical importance of each document.

In this lesson, students will explore how they relate to today's world. Through quotes written by Anne Frank, and current newspaper items that appear in The New York Times, students will examine the connection between the past and the present.

This site invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife’s Tale, both based upon the remarkable diary of 18th-century midwife/healer Martha Ballard. Although DoHistory is centered on the life of Martha Ballard, you can learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history.

This is a two-month team research project for 9-10th graders that uses Library of Congress resources to focus on long-term change in U.S. history. Students gather, analyze, and evaluate primary and secondary sources; develop their own conclusions; and refine their writing.

This lesson introduces students to newsreel as primary source.This lesson is based on the understanding that students have already been exposed to news reel as primary source documents in the Social Studies classroom.

This is a lesson in which students examine songs, interviews, and photos of migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression and then create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker. Students use photos and recordings of migrant workers to create captions, letters, and songs. This lesson can be particularly useful when students are learning about the Great Depression or reading The Grapes of Wrath.