This interactive unit encourages students to evaluate the effect of the inclusion of figurative langauge in Amy Tan's nonfiction narrative essay Fish Cheeks paired with the poem Face It by Janet Wong. This lesson will assist students in understanding the power of language. Students will be compelled to write by the conclusion of this lesson.

In this lesson, students will understand examples of persuasive language and will learn about conditions in the Dust Bowl region in the mid-1930s by examining a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a letter written by farmer Caroline Henderson.

A guideline for teachers to compare the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce and discuss how their narration choices affect the piece and the reader.

In this lesson, students engage in a close reading of Hopper's painting and an Edward Hirsch poem to explore the types of emotion generated by each work in the viewer or reader, and how the painter and poet each achieved these responses.

How do you make sense of contrasting accounts of historical events? What makes one source more reliable than another? How does corroborating information across sources help confirm or discredit historical accounts? In this lesson, students engage in such questions as they evaluate and compare different types of primary source documents with different perspectives on working conditions in English textile factories at the beginning of the 19th century.

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.

In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, calling forth knights and peasants from across Western Europe to march against Muslim Turks in the Byzantine Empire and ultimately ?re-conquer? the holy city of Jerusalem. In this lesson, students compare Christian and Muslim perspectives of the First Crusade by analyzing different accounts of the siege of Jerusalem.

In this lesson students do a close reading of “Learning to Read,” a poem by Francis Watkins Harper about an elderly former slave which conveys the value of literacy to blacks during and after slavery. The activities also prompt students to examine the nature of literacy in the 21st century and the value they put upon it.

Students consider how ordinary citizens contributed to and experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall. They then develop scrapbooks depicting how people experienced the wall and use the books as symbolic bricks in building a classroom Berlin Wall.

In this lesson, students consider how ordinary citizens contributed to and experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall. They then develop scrapbooks depicting how people experienced the wall and use the books as symbolic bricks in building a classroom Berlin Wall.

Students will be able to explain the sources of German nationalism -- including cultural, intellectual, religious, political, and social -- and describe the tensions between nationalism as cultural or linguistic "sameness," e.g. , "German," as well as nationalism as defined by loyalty to a national political institution, e.g. , "Germany." Students will also analyze the creation of the German Empire as constructed "from above" by Prussian leadership through political institutions, economic interest, diplomacy, and war and the consequences of this for political, religious, and nationalistic opponents of German unification. Lastly, students will examine the co-option of traditional political factions such as liberals and conservatives by German unifiers and the emergence of new political groups as various national minority parties, including the Catholic Center Party and the Social Democrats, as a result of unification.

In this activity students read letters from ordinary people to government leaders in the Roosevelt Administration. Then they interpret the range of attitudes about the changing role of the federal government during the New Deal. The letters for this activity all contain reading supports and teachers can differentiate this activity for different levels of learners by choosing which letters to use in the activity.

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.

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.

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 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 these interconnected lessons from TeachHistory.org, students will: 1. evaluate and assess the reasons given to remove Native Americans from their ancestral lands 2. analyze the change in United States government policy towards Native Americans from Washington to Jackson 3. compare and contrast different primary source documents on the same topic 4. make connections between the removal of Native Americans and the theory of "Manifest Destiny." Resource includes an overview, suggested approaches and teacher background information.

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.

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.

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.