In 1845, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written by Himself was published. In it, Douglass criticizes directly often with withering irony those who defend slavery and those who prefer a romanticized version of it.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students will analyze documents from the War Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands — better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau — that Congress established on March 3, 1865, as the Civil War was coming to an end. Using the scale in Weighing the Evidence, students will evaluate the effectiveness of the Freedmen’s Bureau in assisting formerly enslaved persons. Learning Objectives: Students will be able to identify and draw conclusions about the roles of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), critically analyze primary sources, formulate opinions about the effectiveness of the Bureau, and back up their opinions verbally or in writing.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Diagram/Illustration, Interactive
The Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal recovery and relief program provided more than a quarter of a million young black men with jobs during the Depression. By examining primary source documents students analyze the impact of this program on race relations in America and assess the role played by the New Deal in changing them.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this project, you will explore a real-world problem, and then work through a series of steps to analyze that problem, research ways the problem could be solved, then propose a possible solution to that problem. Often, there are no specific right or wrong solutions, but sometimes one particular solution may be better than others. The key is making sure you fully understand the problem, have researched some possible solutions, and have proposed the solution that you can support with information / evidence.Begin by reading the problem statement in Step 1. Take the time to review all the information provided in the statement, including exploring the websites, videos and / or articles that are linked. Then work on steps 2 through 8 to complete this problem-based learning experience.This project will address the following:Habits of Mind: Thinking flexiblyCritical Thinking Skills: Analyze/evaluate
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The Tulsa Race Massacre challenges our understanding of early Oklahoma as a frontier offering freedom, opportunity, and progress to anyone. The experiences of individual Oklahomans may have occasionally aligned with that understanding, but that occurred infrequently at best. The lives and experiences of Oklahomans are much more complex. The events that transpired on the night of May 31 and the following day are difficult to comprehend, and the fact that it happened is frightening. We have a responsibility to face this chapter in order to know our history.
Material Type: Unit of Study
The corrupting influence of slavery on marriage and the family is a predominant theme in Solomon Northup's narrative Twelve Years a Slave. In this lesson, students are asked to identify and analyze narrative passages that provide evidence for how slavery undermined and perverted these social institutions. Northup collaborated with a white ghostwriter, David Wilson. Students will read the preface and identify and analyze statements Wilson makes to prove the narrative is true.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this activity students will examine how attitudes towards slavery and the Civil War changed between 1860 and 1865. What began in the minds of President Lincoln and most northerners as a war to preserve the union changed, over the course of the war, into a war to free the slaves. This transformation occurred in large part because of the actions of enslaved and free African Americans themselves. Students will create a historical marker, based on historical evidence, that addresses the question: "What was the Civil War fought over?"
Material Type: Activity/Lab
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million. The database and the separate estimates interface offer researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history. This resource includes a database of Trans-Atlantic slaving voyages searchable by a wide range of variables in additional to essays, maps, and numerical estimates of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and K-12 lesson plans.
Material Type: Data Set, Diagram/Illustration, Lesson Plan, Primary Source, Reading
Global Citizens in Action is a civic engagement curriculum that focuses on cultural exchange, media literacy, and global citizenship. Through exploring the driving question, “How do we, as youth, engage our communities to create positive social change?”
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Case Study, Full Course, Interactive, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Student Guide
At OSPI, part of our mission is to prepare students for civic engagement throughout their lives. We believe our schools must engage and empower students, from an early age, with opportunities to participate in civil conversations, examples of effective civic engagement, and tools to find peaceful solutions to community problems.OSPI’s Social Studies and Social-Emotional Learning teams have put together resources for educators, families, and students to help with these difficult conversations.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
In this lesson, students examine the poetry of Amanda Gorman, who was chosen to read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. Gorman’s poem will complement Biden’s message and themes of “unity.”
Material Type: Lesson Plan
As American citizens, you are born with rights, but do you even know what those rights are? In this seminar, you will learn about the creation of the Bill of Rights and how those freedoms are still protected by the United States government today. Standards5.1.9.D Compare and contrast the basic principles found in significant documents: Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, PA Constitution.5.1.12.E Analyze and assess the rights of people as written in the PA Constitution and the US Constitution.CC.8.5.9-10.B Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Freedom for some meant slavery for others. The cruel irony of this nation’s founding and its “Temple of Liberty”—the U.S. Capitol—is that both were made possible by the enslavement of African Americans. The labor of enslaved and free blacks helped build the Capitol. An enslaved African American man helped to cast the Statue of Freedom, which was placed atop the Dome during the Civil War. Since the end of the Civil War, African Americans have struggled to move out of the shadows and into the Temple of Liberty as full participants. This the online version of a traveling exhibit by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society that depicts the journey of African Americans from slavery to freedom and political representation in the U.S. Capitol. The exhibit opened February 2006 in Baltimore, Maryland at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.
Material Type: Interactive
Lesson seeds are ideas for the standards that can be used to build a lesson. Lesson seeds are not meant to be all-inclusive, nor are they substitutes for instruction. This lesson seed provides a compelling question and a bank of sources to use to drive an inquiry based lesson or a potential Evidence Based Argument Set (EBAS). When developing lessons from these seeds, teachers must consider the needs of all learners. Once you have built your lesson from the lesson seed, teachers are encouraged to post the lesson that has emerged from this lesson seed and share with others. Compelling question:Should term limits be imposed on members of Congress? EL Modification: highlight important vocabulary, add images to improve text comprenesion; consider adapting content, process and/or product based on Can Do WIDA DescriptorsImage source: "United States Capitol - west front" by Architect of the Capitol from Wikimedia.org
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The Magna Carta served to lay the foundation for the evolution of parliamentary government and subsequent declarations of rights in Great Britain and the United States. In attempting to establish checks on the king's powers, this document asserted the right of "due process" of law.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Even in its first 30 years of existence, the U.S. Constitution had to prove its durability and flexibility in a variety of disputes. More often than not, James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," took part in the discussion.
Material Type: Lesson
Witness the unfolding drama of the Constitutional Convention and the contributions of those whom we have come to know as the Founding Fathers. In this lesson, students will become familiar with four important, but relatively unknown, contributors to the U.S. Constitution Convention: Oliver Ellsworth, Alexander Hamilton, William Paterson, and Edmund Randolph.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students will learn how the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution was shaped by historical events and how it reflected the fundamental values and principles of a newly independent nation.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
How did Abraham Lincoln understand the relationship between principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution?
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Not everyone in the U.S. supported the War of 1812. What events during Madison's presidency raised constitutional questions? What were the constitutional issues? Where did Madison stand?
Material Type: Lesson Plan
