The Nietz Old Textbook Collection is a collection of 19th Century schoolbooks in the Untied States. The collection is used by faculty and students.

Students will begin to learn about the changes that occured on the American homefront because of World War I by analyzing correspondence from Assistant Sec. of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and Boston Red Sox owner Harry H. Frazee.

A collection of multi-media and primary source resources about coal mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Students will explain factors that influenced the movement of people over time by examining the correlation between indentured servitude in the early American colonies and undocumented immigration today. They will understand how demographic trends, such as push and pull factors, lead to conflict, negotiations, and compromise in modern societies.

Studnets will review the included websites/videos to complete the graphic organizer.  Completion of the graphic organizer will first be indpendepent, and then as a large group, the class will include the information for the final draft.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. This online activity follows a young slave's escape from a Kentucky plantation. At each of the four "stops" on this journey, students can listen to audio support of the reading, read primary source quotes, listen to an audio slideshow of primary source images, and write about what they've learned. The teacher's guide provides background information, a Words to Know list, discussion questions, and extension activities.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a frank look at a woman's life at the turn of the 19th century. Published in 1899, Chopin's novella shocked critics and audiences alike, who showed little sympathy for the author or her central protagonist, Edna Pontellier. A master of craft, Chopin wrote a forceful novel about a woman who questioned not only her role in society, but the standards of society itself. In this lesson, students examine Chopin in context.

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).

Combining the study of history and literature, the goal of these activities is to guide students in a self-directed exploration of how Cather's novel interprets and represents the values of fortitude, hard work, and faithfulness that we associate with pioneer life.

Students discuss the variety of ways in which European settlers imagined Native Americans; understand how myths about America's foundation were formulated, debated, and challenged by these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers; explain the basic theological principles of the Quaker and Puritan faiths; and understand how the physical hardships of immigration and the challenges of living and traveling in unfamiliar landscapes shaped the culture of European immigrants in the New World.

Some regarded The Red Badge of Courage as unpatriotic and cowardly. The novel's more nuanced exploration of such values will be explored by students with a close reading of Chapter 23 in comparison with a more traditional tale of combat. Using their new understanding, students will be asked to select one of three published endings to The Red Badge of Courage best suited to their understanding of Crane's exploration of values in the novel.

The Red Badge of Courage's success refleced the birth of a modern sensibility; today we feel something is true when it looks like the sort of thing we see in newspapers or on television news. Gone are the trappings of romance and poetry and all the old ways of memorializing battle that had come to seem increasingly artificial, unreal. Increase your students' understanding of Crane's influences and how the novel's style helped convey a new realism.

Students explain the meaning of the term "individualism" and discuss the way ideals of individualism changed over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; discuss the importance of race and gender in negotiations of American political and cultural independence; explain the relationship between eighteenth- century Enlightenment ideals and nineteenth-century Romanticism; and discuss transformations in American spiritual beliefs between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from the Great Awakening to Deism to more Romantic conceptions of divinity.

A teacher's guide to Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. Contains discussion questions, research and writing prompts and background information.

In this lesson, students will learn about the case of Dorothy E. Davis, et al. vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia using primary source materials. This case predated the Brown vs Board of Education case and was brought about by a 16 year old student who complied the data about the differences between her all black school and the all white school.

Students will examine several documents related to the life of Solomon Northup, whose life story is told in his autobiography Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River in Louisiana.

Within U.S. History II, I encoutnered two issuesOne: how to assist students in developing connections between past events and today's world.Two, how to present hsitorical content to studnets while teaching another specific disipline.So, I developed a graphic organizer for each decade of the 20th Century that fosucses on not necessarily  "dry" historical content, but instead on more culturally impacting events on American lives, using videos from www.history.com.  Students were provided with the graphic organizer packet and the video segment was loaded onto the library computer, (so that I could be working with students in U.S. History I at the same time in another location).Students would review the video segment, usually not focusing on a specifiic historical eventcovered in class, but more about American culture during the time period being reviewed, such as (in)famous individuals, physical items such as toys used in the time period/decade, news events and occurrences such as sporting activities, etcStudents would then need to analyze an audio/visual lesson on a partiuclar subject, but also to formulate a connection between that subject and the world today.

Using the City on a Hill allusion from John Winthrop's famous sermon as a starting point, this lesson
gives students a paradigm, The American Dream, through which to view their study of American
literature in the classroom and in their own reading as well. This series of lessons was designed to meet the needs of gifted children for extension beyond the standard curriculum with the greatest ease of use for the educator. Assessment strategies and rubrics are included at the end of the unit.

In this video and article, students will be exposed to and understand the context and purpose of Nannie H. Burrough's article "Black Women and Reform" and how its language was utilized in fighting for suffrage for the African-American woman. The article may be found on page 31 at http://library.brown.edu/pdfs/128895937640750.pdf