This audio excerpt captures the beginning of Bayard Rustin's 1967 "Freedom Budget" speech, describing the social and economic impact of racism over time.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This lesson provides a Common Core application for high school students for Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. Students will undertake close reading of passages in Things Fall Apart to evaluate the impact of Achebe's literary techniques, the cultural significance of the work, and how this international text serves as a lens to discover the experiences of others.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
This collection uses primary sources to explore immigration to the US and immigrant Americanization between 1880 and 1930. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
Material Type: Primary Source
This online textbook provides a generalized understanding of composition and to serve as a supplementary aid to high school English teachers.
Material Type: Full Course
Nikki Giovanni's poem 'The Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.' is paired with Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, taking students on a quest through time to the Civil Rights movement.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
This lesson shows students how broadly the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 empowered the federal government"”particularly the President"”and asks students to investigate how FDR promoted the program in speeches and then in photographs.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this lesson students will work in small groups to arrange moon phase cards into the correct sequence. Students will learn to explain patterns of changes in the appearance of the moon as it orbits Earth.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The activities in this lesson invite students to focus on the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to describe and analyze their conflicts, and then to watch how those conflicts get resolved.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
From CK-12, U.S. History Sourcebook - Advanced covers U.S. history from Colonial America through World War I. This book provides high school U.S. History teachers and students with sets of primary and secondary sources about important topics. Some teachers will use it as a supplement to a traditional textbook. For those looking to leave the textbook behind entirely, it will provide a course with basic structure and continuity, and will reduce the burden of finding new primary sources for each class meeting. However, it is not yet comprehensive enough to meet the coverage requirements of, for example, an Advanced Placement test.
Material Type: Reading, Textbook
Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students' abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of an excerpted text from Plato's Apology.
Material Type: Primary Source, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study
A deep dive into Citizens United v. FEC, a 2010 Supreme Court case that ruled that political spending by corporations, associations, and labor unions is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. In this video, Sal discusses the case with scholars Richard Hasen and Bradley Smith.
Material Type: Lesson
A deep dive into the First Amendment, which guarantees US citizens freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. In this video, Kim discusses the First Amendment with scholars Erwin Chemerinsky and Michael McConnell.
Material Type: Lesson
Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students' abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of President Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address and Secretary Hillary Clinton's 2011 APEC Address.
Material Type: Primary Source, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study
When most people think of the Civil Rights Movement in America, they think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. But "the Movement" achieved its greatest results due to the competing strategies and agendas of diverse individuals.
Material Type: Lesson
This lesson helps students learn about the judicial system through simulating a real court case involving student free speech rights. In addition to learning about how the Supreme Court operates, students will explore how the Supreme Court protects their rights, interprets the Constitution, and works with the other two branches of government.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
By examining Lincoln's three most famous speeches the Gettysburg Address and the First and Second Inaugural Addresses in addition to a little known fragment on the Constitution, union, and liberty, students trace what these documents say regarding the significance of union to the prospects for American self-government.
Material Type: Lesson
Americans affirmed their independence with the ringing declaration that "all men are created equal." Some of them owned slaves, however,and were unwilling to give them up as they gave speeches and wrote pamphlets championing freedom, liberty, and equality. So "to form a more perfect union" in 1787, certain compromises were made in the Constitution regarding slavery. This settled the slavery controversy for the first few decades of the American republic, but this situation changed with the application of Missouri for statehood in 1819.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this module, students will read, discuss, and analyze contemporary and classic texts, focusing on how complex characters develop through interactions with one another and how authors structure text to accomplish that development. There will be a strong emphasis on reading closely and responding to text dependent questions, annotating text, and developing academic vocabulary in context.
Material Type: Module
In this module, students engage with literature and nonfiction texts that develop central ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness, among others. Building on work with evidence-based analysis and debate in Module 1, students will produce evidence-based claims to analyze the development of central ideas and text structure. Students will develop and strengthen their writing by revising and editing, and refine their speaking and listening skills through discussion-based assessments.
Material Type: Module
