Lacking any organized army before 1775 (aside from local colonial militias), the Continental Congress had to assemble a more or less improvised fighting force that would be expected to take on the army of the world's largest empire. This lesson will trace events in the North from 1775 to 1778. By looking at documents of the time, and using an interactive map, students will see how an army was created and understand the challenges that Washington and his men faced during this critical early stage of the war.

In this lesson, students use maps to learn about the geographicac features and climate of Mali and consider what this can tell us about demographics and economics of the country.

In December 1941, Japanese armed forces launched a massive offensive, attacking targets as far East as Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and as far West as Burma. This lesson plan will focus on the overall strategies pursued by the Japanese and the Allies in the initial months of World War II in Asia and the Pacific.

Before the birth of opposition political parties, divisions among U.S. leaders developed over the ratification of the Constitution.

This lesson allow students to explore the forces that prompted the literary modernism movement, specifically focusing on modernist poetry. By allowing students to explore the movement independently, they will also be able to develop research and inquiry skills.

American foreign policy continues to resonate with the issues involved in the entry of the United States into World War I"”unilateralism versus foreign alliances, the responsibilities of power, the influence of the military-industrial complex on foreign policy, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals. Understanding the choices the Wilson administration made and their consequences provides insight into international affairs in the years since the end of the Great War and beyond. In this lesson, students reconsider the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I through the lens of archival documents.

What qualities made George Washington an effective military leader? How were the responsibilities of the Commander-in-Chief affected by conditions during the Revolutionary War?

The Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931 was only the first step in what became a much larger campaign to create a pro-Japanese "buffer state" in North China. This lesson will examine the overall principles which underlay both Japanese and American foreign policy in the mid- to late-1930s.

Malcolm X argued that America was too racist in its institutions and people to offer hope to blacks. In contrast with Malcolm X's black separatism, Martin Luther King, Jr. offered what he considered "the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest" as a means of building an integrated community of blacks and whites in America. This lesson will contrast the respective aims and means of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. to evaluate the possibilities for black American progress in the 1960s.

One of Douglass's goals in his autobiography is to illustrate beyond doubt that slavery had an insidious, spirit-killing effect on the slaveholder as well as the slave.

This lesson plan examines the tensions and the sources of ultimate cohesion within the Grand Alliance during the period when eventual victory seemed uncertain.

In this lesson, students examine the First and Second National Banks and whether or not such a bank's powers are constitutional or unconstitutional.

Introduce to your students concepts of realism, a literary movement in the 19th century that focused on reporting aspects of "common" life (common, of course, is a relative term). Chopin is often regarded as a practitioner of regionalism or local color (the two terms are often used interchangeably).

Students examine a series of primary source documents that will help them understand why these laws were passed, and how they were applied in the mid- to late-1930s.

In this lesson students will participate in a role-play activity that has them become members of a newspaper or magazine editorial board preparing a retrospective report about the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s.

In this lesson, students will become familiar with China, Central Asia, and the Silk Road in the time of Marco Polo.

Students develop a foundation on which to understand the basic disagreements between North and South.

Students examine Washington's ability to handle a wide range of problems during his time as Commander-in-Chief.

Students examine examples of primary documents (and some secondary accounts) that illuminate key points in President Madison's letter. The lesson identifies 10 statements in the message about which students are likely to have questions, and it provides relevant materials. If students raise questions about other sections of the letter, class members may be able to locate pertinent documents on their own, once they become familiar with some of the sources available in the records of Congress.

Using primary documents, this lesson aims to introduce students to how the American revolutionaries employed religion in their arguments for independence.