EDSITEment! and the National Endowment for the Humanities offer this cooperative learning experience that engages students in viewing archival photographs, analyze information from a database of more than 2,000 archival newspaper accounts about race relations in the United States, and read newspaper articles written from different points of view about post-war riots in Chicago.

As a historic unit of the National Park Service, the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The site also is within the boundaries of the Logan Circle Historic District. This lesson is based on the Historic Resources Study for Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, as well as other materials on Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women. The lesson was written by Brenda K. Olio, former Teaching with Historic Places historian, and edited by staff of the Teaching with Historic Places program and Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site.

Tradition and technology come together in this lesson in which students learn about Alaskan animals through Native American tales and their own online research.

This is a cross-curricular activity that uses the story Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday to practice money and decimal skills in addition to reading and writing skills. After reading or hearing the story, students will complete the attached worksheet. (If it's read aloud, students would need a way to refer back to the story to answer the questions. The worksheet has a mixture of reading and math questions. It can be edited if you choose. It can be used for either 3rd or 4th grade. With slight modifications, it could also be used for middle school EL students to learn about currency.

Students explore their towns' landmarks, symbols, and people; look at brochures and other informational tools; practice writing for a specific audience and revising; and work collaboratively to create a brochure.

Students learn about alliteration, and then practice using alliteration in acrostic poems, tongue twisters, alphabet books, and number books.

Students compare attending a performance at The Globe Theater with attending a modern theater production or movie. They then create a commercial for an Elizabethan audience promoting a modern product.

Students use this online tool to create an alphabet chart or pages for an alphabet book.

Students write original stories using alphabetical order, beginning each page with a new letter, and then illustrate their texts in class or at home with their families.

The traditional autobiography writing project is given a twist as students write alphabiographies - recording an event, person, object, or feeling associated with each letter of the alphabet.

Through a close reading of "Amelia Bedelia", students reread the material to discuss text-dependent questions, promoting deep thinking about the text and its characters.

This primary source set includes documents and images from the lives of American authors in the 19th century. A teacher guide is included to assist educators in utilizing the primary sources in their instruction.

Groups of students read and discuss American folklore stories, each group reading a different story. Using a jigsaw strategy, the groups compare character traits and main plot points of the stories. A diverse selection of American folk tales is used for this lesson, which is adaptable to any text set.

In this unit students continue the exploration of factors that influence change by examining the events that led up to the American Revolution. Over the course of the unit, students will build a deeper understanding of the significant ideas and values at the heart of the American Revolution, what drove the colonists to seek independence, and how conflict between England and the colonists ultimately influenced change in our country. Students will see the American Revolution from multiple perspectives, starting with analyzing the difference in perspectives between the British and the colonists and how each side’s actions often instigated each other. Students will also explore how class structure influenced colonists perspectives. Later in the unit, students will think about the perspectives of black people, women and Native Americans who were forced to choose a side and why they may have had a different point of view of the events of the revolution.

An important part of this unit is pushing students to focus on seeing history from multiple different perspectives. The core text Liberty! How the Revolutionary War Began offers one perspective on events, however, the prespective is limited to that held by white elite colonists. Therefore, students also read excerpts from A Young People's History of the United States in order to build a deeper understanding of all sides of the Revolution.

his lesson uses music and art in a vocabulary study of unfamiliar words from the song "America the Beautiful," increasing students' vocabulary while also increasing their knowledge of U.S. geography. A discussion to activate students' prior knowledge about sights and scenery throughout the United States is followed by a read-aloud and introduction to the song "America the Beautiful," which is then sung in each session of the lesson. Students learn the meanings of the song's words through shared reading and the use of context clues and images. Students then use photographs, illustrations, and descriptive language to create a mural shaped like the United States. Finally, through pictures and words, students reflect on what they have learned. This lesson is appropriate and adaptable for any patriotic event or holiday, and many of the vocabulary strategies are adaptable for other texts or word lists, as well.

Students are often asked to perform speeches, but rarely do we require students to analyze speeches as carefully as we study works of literature. In this unit, students are required to identify the rhetorical strategies in a famous speech and the specific purpose for each chosen device. They will write an essay about its effectiveness and why it is still famous after all these years.

By analyzing Dear Abby's rant about bad grammar usage, students become aware that attitudes about race, social class, moral and ethical character, and "proper" language use are intertwined.

In this lesson students use the Informational Text Analysis Tool to deconstruct the essential elements of informational text. Informational text is more important to teachers than ever before, especially with the rise of the new Core standards. The Library of Congress is an excellent resource for finding and using texts to build students' reading skills.Through a diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informational and primary source texts, students build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspective.

In this lesson Students individually consider a visual text and draw conclusions based on what they see. They write about their conclusions and explain the evidence used to make that determination. Students will be able to analyze a visual text. Students will be able to develop and support a claim about the visual text based on evidence found in the text.