By examining Lincoln's three most famous speeches the Gettysburg Address and the First and Second Inaugural Addresses in addition to a little known fragment on the Constitution, union, and liberty, students trace what these documents say regarding the significance of union to the prospects for American self-government.

This cross-curricular resource contains a primary source text on the Civil War, along with text-dependent questions, an academic vocabulary list, and a writing prompt that goes along with the text, including student responses. Students read Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address independently, then as a class before beginning work.

In this two day lesson plan, students will delve into an analysis of Joseph McCarthy's speech, "Enemies from Within" and identify reasoning, bias, rhetorical devices, and relationships between ideas.

This page contains a teacher's guide for Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. The guide includes background information on the time period and on Anne Frank's life, prompts for writing and discussion, vocabulary words, and supplemental information and resources to extend knowledge of World War 2 and the Holocaust and their timelines.

This page contains notes on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, with strategies for approach, lesson ideas, suggestions for discussion and projects, and ways to tie the content to modern day issues.

On March 1, 1896, a massive Ethiopian army routed Italian forces at the Battle of Adwa. The battle marked the largest military triumph of an African state over a European army in the 19th century and helped Ethiopia retain its independence during Europe's "scramble for Africa." In this lesson students read three different textbook accounts of the battle - two American and one Ethiopian - to investigate the question: How did Ethiopia defeat Italy at the Battle of Adwa?

This brochure assignment teaches how shifting purposes and audiences can create change in a student’s writing. After exploring published brochures, students determine key questions, research a topic and work through the writing process to create their own informative brochure complete with visuals.

This webpage has approximately 300 political cartoons and lessons for classroom use covering an variety of current events. Each cartoon has talking points, a blank cartoon students can caption and additional resources. Note* This lesson works well with the following cartoon evaluation resource (Cartoon Evaluation Worksheet): http://nieonline.com/cftc/pdfs/eval.pdf

This exercise from The Biology Project is designed to introduce students to the events that occur in the cell cycle and the process of mitosis that divides the duplicated genetic material, creating two identical daughter cells. It includes tutorial readings and multiple choice questions to test students' knowledge.

This resource provides a close reading lesson of The Gospel of Wealth. Learners will spend time deconstructing the text by performing multiple reads.

This resource provides a lesson which is designed to provide students with the opportunity to perform a close reading of a text. Students will respond to the provided text dependent questions, outline the text, and complete a comparitive essay.

Students share opinions about the tone and content of two commercials presented during the Super Bowl.They then work with a partner to critique a commercial from a past Super Bowl, and then assess the commercials that run during a half-hour television show.

This unit has been developed to guide students and instructors in a close reading of Learned Hand?s ?I am an American Day Address? from Appendix B of the Common Core Standards. The activities and actions follow a carefully developed set of steps that assist students in increasing their familiarity and understanding of Hand?s speech through a series of text-dependent tasks and questions that ultimately develop college and career ready skills identified in the Common Core standards. This unit is recommended as an activity for a ?Great Conversation? Module and can be taught in two days of study and reflection on the part of students and their teachers. A third day or more could be added if the time is needed or extension activities are desired.

This lesson looks at Thomas Paine and at some of the ideas presented in his pamphlet, "Common Sense,"Â such as national unity, natural rights, the illegitimacy of the monarchy and of hereditary aristocracy, and the necessity for independence and the revolutionary struggle.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

In this lesson on Family Ties from Teaching Tolerance, students will critically evaluate media messages on the issue of immigration and families, illustrate a narrative, and prepare and conduct an interview and debate on how undocumented status affects the day-to-day lives of immigrant families, particularly women.

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 cross-curricular resource contains a primary source that argues for the ratification of the United States constitution, along with text-dependent questions, a vocabulary list, a writing prompt for writing to sources that includes sample student responses, and a graphic organizer to help students.

Suggestions on how to guide students through the writing process when writing editorials "” from brainstorming a topic to publishing their work "” and all the steps in between.