This lesson on the Japanese tanka encourages students to explore the structure and content of the form and to arrive at a definition of the structure in English.

Now celebrated in more than 40 countries, Jazz Appreciation Month offers an opportunity to explore cultural dynamics that inform jazz music across places, as well as the idiosyncratic ways in which jazz artists reimagine and perform their local for the global.

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

Explore the philosophical contributions that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson made to the movement for American independence. The lesson introduces students to some of the important precursor documents, such as Franklin's Albany Plan of 1754 and Jefferson's Draft of the Virginia Constitution, that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The month of May is an opportunity for reflection on and commemoration of all that Jewish Americans have accomplished and contributed to U.S. history and culture. This piece highlights NEH projects and classroom resources for teaching about these experiences in America.

If James Madison was the "father" of the Constitution," John Marshall was the "father of the Supreme Court""”almost single-handedly clarifying its powers. This new lesson is designed to help students understand Marshall's brilliant strategy in issuing his decision on Marbury v. Madison, the significance of the concept of judicial review, and the language of this watershed case.

In this three-part lesson on the inner chapters of "The Grapes of Wrath" students will first determine the function of Steinbeck's opening chapter then explore the relationship between the inner chapters and the Joad narrative chapters throughout the novel. Students will view two documentaries along the way as well as read two relevant articles in order to draw their own conclusions about the purpose of this novel's inner chapters.

Students align original FSA photographs from the 1930s and the author's own journal entries, to trace parallel elements John Steinbeck then incorporated into passages in The Grapes of Wrath.

Curriculum unit on the historical  context of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle and how the book helped reform efforts in Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

"To Build a Fire" is an excellent example of American literary naturalism. In this multi-day lesson students will perfrom close-reading analyses of this classic short story as they study the use of point of view to create a narrative. Students will also debate the distinction between knowledge and instinct using textual evidence.

In 1950, North Korean forces, armed mainly with Soviet weapons, invaded South Korea in an effort to reunite the peninsula under communist rule. This lesson will introduce students to the conflict by having them read the most important administration documents related to it.

Three simple and age appropriate activities on Spanish language and culture which focus on the family and the Spanish names for various family members.

What makes the U.S. Capitol "symbolically important?" Presented with a variety of archival documents, your students can answer that question for themselves. Working in small groups, the students will uncover and share the Capitol's story. The primary sources are presented to the students as mysteries, with a challenge to tie together the information in the documents or images through research.

A curriculum unit of three lessons in which students explore Hopi place names, poetry, song, and traditional dance to better understand the ways Hopi people connect with the land and environment through language. The unit is centered on the practice of growing corn. Students make inferences about language, place, and culture and also look closely at their own home environment and landscape to understand the places, language, and songs that give meaning to cultures and communities

In this lesson from EDSITEment, students will explore Kurt Vonnegut’s satire and think about the implications of the pursuit of equality in relation to the American creed. But the way of life he depicts also invites students to think anew about the meaning and importance of the “American Dream,” and about whether technology helps or hinders the American character and our prospects for happiness. Audio and visual resources are included.

This lesson introduces students to the blues, one of the most distinctive and influential elements of African-American musical tradition. Students take a virtual tour of Memphis, TN and explore the history of the blues in the work of W.C. Handy and a variety of country blues singers whose music preserves the folk origins of this unique American art form. The lesson concludes with students composing their own blues lyrics.

Students discover why Leonardo is considered the ultimate Renaissance man. They will learn about his famous notebooks, focusing upon his machines of motion, then zooming in on the flying machines.

Did changes in state constitutions tend to affect the voting population? In this lesson, students discuss the general trend in the first half of the 19th century to extend the right to vote to more white males.

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.

This lesson will focus on the chief objections of the Anti-federalists, especially The Federal Farmer (Richard Henry Lee), Centinel, and Brutus, regarding the extended republic. Students will become familiar with the larger issues surrounding this debate, including the nature of the American Union, the difficulties of uniting such a vast territory with a diverse multitude of regional interests, and the challenges of maintaining a free republic as the American people moved toward becoming a nation rather than a mere confederation of individual states.