From the Standford University Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute,the primary goal of this lesson is to challenge students’ preconceived notions about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and the roles they played in the African American Freedom Struggle. While there is certainly much to be learned by examining the different philosophies and tactics of each leader, these two men, who combined their religious leadership with political action, have much more to teach us as we explore how their vision for racial justice developed into a call for social and economic equality and human rights.

In this lesson students will be able to: 1. define Marxism and its historical progress 2. understand how and why Marxism spread among intellectuals, workers, and peasants of Europe 3.compare and contrast Marxism with other political and economic systems (such as capitalism, socialism, Fascism, and Liberalism) and put it into its proper historical and philosophical context 4. understand the social and political impact of Marxism in the twentieth-century world. *Link to The Manifesto of the Communist Party included.

A teachers guide for Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz, including a detailed timeline, supplemental images, questions for each chapter, prompts for class discussion, vocaulary words and phrases, suggested exercises, and ideas for further reading.

Includes six text-dependent questions, one constructed response writing prompt, and explanatory information for teachers regarding alignment to the CCSS for Thomas Jefferson's 1801 Inaugural Address.

In this DBQ Project lesson plan, students will examine ten documents to explore the Mongols and determine how barbaric the barbarians actually were.

Monroe brought a vision of an expanded America to his presidency"”a vision that helped facilitate the formulation of what has become known as the Monroe Doctrine. In this unit, students will review the Monroe Doctrine against a background of United States foreign relations in the early years of the republic.

Students will explore the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. They will then research various perspectives, discuss the events in context, and write statements from the perspective of a country or organization involved.

In this lesson, students will recognize and discuss the role of protest songs in the Birmingham youth movement. Then, they will identify their own political agendas and write protest songs.

This lesson plan has students do research on the myths surrounding Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. They will engage in reading, writing, and research activities that will have them learn skills in distinguishing truth from fiction as well as developing a deeper understanding about an important American historical document. Links to suggested sites for students to do their research on the myths are provided in the lesson.

In this lesson, students discuss the meaning of “A More Perfect Union,” a speech about race made by then-Senator Barack Obama, during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign. Students will also examine and assess how textbooks position groups differently in our national historical narrative — and how this positioning affects our understanding of ourselves.

Students will understand the New Deal, its programs, goals, and in particular students will evaluate the success of the New Deal in preserving a market economy.

Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Soviet leaders had been claiming that communism and capitalism could never peacefully coexist. Agreements regarding the postwar world were reached at Yalta and Potsdam, but the Soviets wasted no time in violating them. Harry Truman believed that the proper means of responding to an international bully was a credible threat of force.

Students explore the two worlds that made contact when Columbus stepped ashore in the New World in 1492. The goals of this lesson are to gain an understanding of the forces within European society that found expression in the voyage of Christopher Columbus, to examine the cultures of those whom Columbus and his successors encountered in the New World, to analyze the degree to which cultural expectations shaped the encounter experience for Columbus, and to reconstruct the encounter experience for those who saw Columbus sail into their world.

In this lesson, students will hone in on skills that allow them to closely analyze, deeply read, and interact with texts.

This lesson addresses rhetorical strategies President Kennedy used in his inaugural address in 1961. This reading can come to life and be used to address good writing skills.

Students read and analyze excerpts from texts written by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and answer questions about the information presented, developing their nonfiction reading comprehension. This activity serves as a supplement to the HHMI short film The Origin of the Species: The Making of a Theory.

In this lesson, students will analyze an excerpt from Mary Rowlandson's The Captive: The True Story Of The Captivity Of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Among The Indians. They then compare an excerpt of Shakespeare's The Tempest with Aimé Césaire's A Tempest in order to facilitate a postcolonial reading of Shakespeare. Students will arrive at an understanding of "the other" and will consider how canonical literature may position white characters in relation to those of different ethnicities.

Two important speeches to be given during the Cold War were McCarthy’s Fifty-seven Names speech and Truman’s 1947 address to Congress, commonly known as the Truman Doctrine. These documents provide the advanced student the opportunity to analyze persuasive structure in two primary source documents(Reading Informational Texts  5, 6 and 9) as well as provide the opportunity to practice the specific vocabulary that is required for analyzing rhetoric at the advanced and college level (Language 5 and 6). Initially, these documents serve as practice for analyzing rhetoric for advanced students. Beyond the initial analysis of these documents, they pair well with Miller’s popular drama, The Crucible, to support Miller’s interpretation of the zeitgeist of the 1950s. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Students read an article (which is included in this link) that asserts that all stories across time and medium can be put into one of seven models. Students will then search the newspapers and their own knowledge of books, film, television,etc. to compare and contrast with the nonfiction pieces as well as the article's theory about thematic connections. Any respected newspaper will suffice for this lesson.

In this lesson and resource, students analyze informational texts looking for the use of rhetorical devices.