Students read about what it"™s like to be a Muslim teenager growing up in America at this moment, then consider ideas for countering stereotypes and Islamophobia. Lessons include guided informational readings, research and writing suggestions, videos, and resources to continue the discussion.

In this lesson, students will analyze two sets of primary sources related to the Haitian Revolution in order to understand how it influenced and was influenced by other world events of the period, specifically the French Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase.

In this multi-day unit students conduct research, work with an interactive Venn diagram tool, and create a museum exhibit that highlights the work of selected artists, musicians, and poets. Critical thinking, creativity, and interdisciplinary connections are emphasized.

This primary source document is an outline of arguments for East German agitators on how to deal with those who left the GDR for West Germany. It was published in 1955, six years before the Berlin Wall was built, at a time when thousands of citizens were leaving East Germany.

In this lesson, students examine how evolution has been scientifically explained historically. In doing so, students will read and analyze the arguments and theories set forth by three historically significant scientists: Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Alfred Russell Wallace, and Charles Darwin.

This resource provides a lesson designed to assist learners with acquiring skills needed to differentiate between real and fictious, possibly malicious, websites. Students will evaluate hoax sites prior to outlining and designing one of their own. It is expected that this lesson will help students to better recognize trustworthy sites for online reading and research.

This study of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau is designed to give students an understanding of the ideas of these four philosophers and is also an opportunity for them to reflect on humanity's need for order and efforts to create stability within the social community. In the first part of the unit, activities focus student awareness on the nature of government itself and then progress to close reading and writing centered on the specifics of each philosopher's views. Large-group and small-group discussion as well as textual evidence are emphasized throughout. In the second part of the unit, students are asked to engage in creative writing that has research as its foundation. Collaboration, role-playing, and a panel discussion
are fundamental parts of the culminating activity. Options for further writing activities and assessments close the unit.

In this lesson, students will read articles related to a misstatement of future glacier health in the Himalayas that was reported in the 2007 United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 4. The class will discuss the articles and ramifications of inaccuracies in scientific literature as well as the importance of validating sources as peer-reviewed. As this topic is complex, the students will need guidance in the form of an introduction to peer-reviewed literature, which is outlined here. Furthermore, the objective of this lesson is not to vilify the IPCC or any other well-intentioned group, but rather to elucidate the use of proper references and procedure when summarizing a contentious scientific issue with broad geopolitical implications.

This presentation is intended for use with the lesson plan "How and Why Did the Holocaust Occur?: Exploring Action and Inaction through the Survival Story of Esther Gutman Lederman." In this lesson, students will closely examine the various categories and actions (or inactions) of people during the Holocaust, including the perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, resisters, rescuers, victims, and survivors. Students will explore each category in an attempt to gain an intricate understanding about how something as unfathomable as the Holocaust occurred. Students will then identify these categories of people while viewing the incredible story of Holocaust survivor, Esther Gutman Lederman. Esther spent 22 months hiding in a home owned by a Christian family in Poland. She is alive because this Christian family risked their own lives to save her and 4 other Jews. Students will culminate their exploration by focusing on the incredible actions of victims and survivors (such as Esther), resisters, and rescuers, as they create a medal of honor to bestow on a person or group of their choice.

In this lesson on True Crime: The Roots of an American Obsession, students will analyze how the author develops a claim related to the central idea of the role of fiction and its relation to guilt.

This lesson and resource uses headline articles to help students read effectively by distilling main ideas from an informational text.

Students analyze the work of winners of the Learning Network's 2014 Student Editorial Contest as well as professional models from the Times editorial pages to learn how writers effectively introduce and respond to counterarguments. Then they write their own position pieces, incorporating counterarguments to strengthen their claims.

In this lesson, students will identify how Common's rap song "A Dream" and Walter Dean Myers's short story "Monkeyman" reinterpret Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of nonviolence. Students will delve into a text-based discussion on characterization and conflict, as well as compose an essay on the Six Principles of Nonviolence (rubric available).

In this lesson on the Spanish American War from Historical Thinking Matters, students will explore sources, webquests, and activities designed to help in answering the following essay question: "The explosion of the U.S.S. Maine caused the United States to invade Cuba in 1898. Use the documents provided and your own knowledge to evaluate this statement. Do you agree with this explanation of the causes of the Spanish American War? Why or why not? Use and cite evidence from the documents to support your analysis of this statement.”

In this lesson with five activities, students will develop the skills necessary to make evidence-based claims, working in pairs to make EBCs and present them to the class.

This news brief from February 2013 provides the evolutionary explanation for why some vaccines provide lifelong protection with one or a few doses, but the flu requires a new shot every year. This article includes a set of discussion and extension questions for use in class. It also includes hints about related lessons that might be used in conjunction with this one.

The atrocities committed by the Japanese in China during the 1930s are well documented. Various Japanese textbooks, however, have downplayed or overlooked the scale and scope of these events. In this lesson, students examine how two textbooks ? one Japanese and the other Chinese ? depict what happened during the Japanese occupation of Nanking. Students then corroborate each textbook with an excerpt from historian Jonathan Spence?s The Search for Modern China.

In this lesson and resource, students evaluate debate claims and examine their own reasoning.

In this 2 day, 4 activity lesson, students will explore how to make evidence based claims and how to use text dependent questions as a guide.

In this lesson, students gain a sense of the dramatic effect of FDR's voice on his audience, see the scope of what he was proposing in these first two "Fireside Chats," and make an overall analysis of why the series of speeches were so successful.