Lesson Plans
Which Is More Important, Individual Privacy or Public Safety?
Students will analyze primary sources to learn about Japanese internment following the attack on Pearl Harbor and consider how American attitudes towards the internment have shifted over time. After, students will consider if the surveillance of American phone/internet/email records is necessary and appropriate in order to protect national security in the 21st century. Once they have chosen a particular issue and their opinions about it, students will and design a social media campaign to raise awareness in support of their view.
Pledge of Allegiance Image Sequencing
Most school children in the United States recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. But what does the pledge really mean? By analyzing primary source images and pairing them with the text, students deepen their understanding of a citizen's commitment to country. After, students create and decorate their own pledge to family, heritage, culture, class, or school.
African American Identity in the Gilded Age: Two Unreconciled Strivings
Students explore their personal identities, then analyze primary sources to examine the tension experienced by African Americans as they struggled to establish a vibrant and meaningful identity based on the promises of liberty and equality in the midst of a society that was ambivalent towards them and sought to impose an inferior definition upon them. After, students choose a subject from one primary source and bring this speaker into the present to talk with the class about his or her observation of today's world compared with his or her own.
Making a Declaration – Beginning
Students investigate the Declaration of Independence as a founding document of the United States, then consider the historical and contemporary relevance of its most famous phrase and how it relates to a personal vision of the American dream.
Making a Declaration – Intermediate
Students investigate the importance of the Declaration of Independence as a founding document of the United States, then consider the historical and contemporary relevance of its most famous phrase and how it relates to a personal vision of the American dream.
Making a Declaration – Advanced
Students investigate the historical impact of the Declaration of Independence, then consider the significance of the Declaration of Independence to the United States today and the contemporary relevance of its most famous phrase to the country, to the community, and to self.
Tree of Liberty
Students compare and contrast perspectives of the economics of slavery and free industry in the mid 19th century, then consider issues they might include under a tree of liberty for modern times.