In this lesson, students will look behind the story at the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that shape the narrative throughout Esperanza Rising. The lesson also invites students to contemplate some of the changes Esperanza undergoes as she grows into a responsible young woman and the contradictions that she experiences.

Practice working with primary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.

This lesson plan is the third in the "Incredible Bridges: Poets Creating Community" series. It provides a video of the United State Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, reading the poem "Every Day We Get More Illegal" and a companion lesson with a sequence of activities for use with secondary students before, during, and after reading to help them enter and experience the poem.

Teach Immigration History from the University of Texas at Austin explains the important and complicated history of immigration to the United States for general audiences and high school teachers of U.S. history and civics courses.  The backbone of the website is an 80-item chronology of key events, laws, and court rulings that are further explained by a dozen thematic lesson plans on topics such as citizenship, an overview of major laws, gender and immigration, and migration within the Americas.

This lesson explores how The Giver addresses issues of personal identity, memory, and the value of reading and education. It also examines how this newer read relates to other famous classics in this genre and books that students may have read on their own.

One of the most famous political speeches on freedom in the twentieth century was delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union message to Congress. This lesson examines the rhetorical use of "freedom" with the objective of encouraging students to glimpse the broad range of hopes and aspirations that are expressed in the call of and for freedom.

Students become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and see how stories change when orally transferred between generations and cultures. They learn how both fables and trickster tales use various animals in different ways to portray human strengths and weaknesses in order to pass down wisdom from one generation to the next.

As some of the foundational texts for beginning readers, fairy tales are a staple of many classrooms. This lesson allows students to engage with fairy tales from different regions around the world and compare important cultural elements of these stories.

William Faulkner's self-proclaimed masterpiece, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, is a fascinating exploration of the many voices found in a Southern family and community. The following curriculum unit examines the novel's use of multiple voices in its narrative.

This lesson focuses on the debates among the U.S. Founders surrounding the distribution of power between states and the federal government. Students learn about the pros and cons of state sovereignty vs. federalism and have the opportunity to argue different sides of the issue.

This curriculum unit explores some of the most important arguments of those opposing or supporting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

After completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to summarize the contents of the First Amendment and give examples of speech that is protected by the Constitution and speech that is not protected by the Constitution.

Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. But political parties did form in the United States, with their beginnings in Washington's cabinet.

Known as both a Southern and a Catholic writer, Flannery O'Connor wrote stories that explore the complexities of these two identities. In this lesson, students will challengethese dichotomieswhile closely reading and analyzing "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

Learn how writer Zora Neale Hurston incorporated and transformed black folklife in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. By exploring Hurston's own life history and collection methods, listening to her WPA recordings of folksongs and folktales, and comparing transcribed folk narrative texts with the plot and themes of the novel, students will learn about the crucial role of oral folklore in Hurston's written work.

Upon completion of this lesson students will become more familiar with Chinese geography by mapping the path of the wall. They will also explain the construction of the Great Wall as a product of the period in which it was built and discuss in brief the dynasty- the Ming Dynasty- during which major construction on the wall was completed. Students will then identify reasons for the dedication of significant resources to the construction of the wall and discuss in brief China's neighbors to the north, in particular the Mongols and Manchus.

This lesson will trace the Berlin blockade and airlift of 1948-49 and the establishment of NATO. Students will read original documents and view photographs of the period to learn why the Soviets sparked this crisis, how the United States responded, and why the NATO alliance was formed.

In this lesson students do a close reading of “Learning to Read,” a poem by Francis Watkins Harper about an elderly former slave which conveys the value of literacy to blacks during and after slavery. The activities also prompt students to examine the nature of literacy in the 21st century and the value they put upon it.

In 1845, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Written by Himself was published. In it, Douglass criticizes directly often with withering irony those who defend slavery and those who prefer a romanticized version of it.