Lesson Plans
Selma & Voting Rights: Standing Up for Equality
Through inquiry into primary sources, students discover a story of citizens shaping and sustaining our democracy through civic action and will contemplate the import and impact of citizens who strive for equality. This lesson may be used prior to reading a fictional work or poem related to the civil rights movement or in conjunction with a close reading of Lyndon B. Johnson’s March 15, 1965 voting rights address to Congress (in whole or in part).
Voting: Rights and Responsibilities
In this three-part lesson students use primary sources to explore voting rights in the United States. In Part I, students analyze two sets of documents to gain a deeper understanding of how suffrage has been both expanded and suppressed, developing claims about how voting rights impact equality. In Part II, students further analyze one of the documents from Day One before taking on the role of a congressional committee charged with amending (or not) the Voting Rights Act to require compulsory voting. In Part III, students write their answer to the Essential Question, informed by class discussion and primary source analysis.