Students apply historical information to math problems to gain an understanding of the flag's size. This activity is included in the online exhibition entitled The Star-Spangled Banner: The Flag that Inspired the National Anthem.
Students practice using map elements to study location, distance, and directions and create maps of the local community, comparing differences in human characteristics in rural and urban communities.
In this lesson, students practice using language related to chronology. They work with the histories of their own lives as well as the history of their school. They begin to learn about different sources of information.
Students can learn about how people from the Pacific region have been represented on stamps over the history of the United States. This is a resource from the Smithsonian Postal Museum and it addresses the culture of the United States.
Students can learn about American Sports figures that have been represented on stamps over the history of the United States. This is a resource from the Smithsonian Postal Museum and it addresses the culture of the United States.
Read-alouds of The Story of Lightning and Thunder (a Nigerian tale) and The Story of the Milky Way: A Cherokee Tale introduce the concept of a pourquoi tale, a folk tale that explains how or why something came to exist. Background information on the Nigerian and Cherokee cultures (assembled by the teacher from the listed websites) sets the stage for discussion of how beliefs and customs might influence the narrative and the moral of a story. The class works together to outline the key elements of pourquoi stories, and students read and analyze an additional story using the Pourquoi Reading Worksheet. Working in cooperative groups, students then use these stories as a framework on which to write their own pourquoi tales. Final production is either a skit or illustrated narration of each group's story. If these books are not available, other folktale books will substitute and the lesson can be adapted.
In this activity, students will view and analyze oral histories of naturalized citizens. Through interpretation of the interviews, they will develop a better understanding of recent naturalization experiences. Each oral history includes not only the record of the interview, but also incorporates an object that belongs to the informant.
In this activity, students will identify and interview a naturalized citizen. During the interview, students will also draw out the story behind one special belonging of the naturalized citizen. Through compiling the interview, students will work to understand a recent naturalization experience, while developing technical skills in video production. Each video interview will then be publicly shared to enable other students to learn from that citizen’s story.
The teacher will introduce students to the two web articles with perspectives about slavery (one from the perspective of a slave and one from the perspective of slave owners). Then the higher level will have a discussion about the two perspectives. Higher-level students will write a R.A.F.T, assuming a ROLE and using the R.A.F.T and the rubric to guide their writing. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.
Students will learn some details about the civil rights movement. They will explain historical events that occured in local communities as well as see the impact of contributions made by historical figures in local communities over time. They will be able to explain change over time through historical narratives and how multiple perspectives are portrayed through historical narratives.
In this lesson, students will actively read Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World using the suggested reading strategies. Part of an OurStory module entitled Discover and Protect Nature, this activity includes a list of challenge words, active reading suggestions, and background information.
Students will think of three symbols to represent Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and create a window decoration with those symbols.
Students will look at ways artists and members of the public responded to the events of September 11, 2001. You will then use images of those responses to create a digital memorial of photographs.
Students can access a variety of materials and activities from the Smithsonian Museum which connect with the life of slaves and the Underground Railroad.
Students will play the role of newspaper reporters in order to research, write, and publish an article about the history of the Star-Spangled Banner. This is connected with the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.
Students will take a close look at an object that was made by an immigrant who came to the United States. Then children will consider important moments in their family history. This resource is connected with the Smithsonian Musuem.
Students will assume the role of fictional Americans in 1963 and make decisions based on the evidence found in a historical artifact related to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In these lessons, students learn a traditional Chinese folktale and examine a contemporary artwork that’s based on it. The work, Xu Bing’s Monkeys Grasp for the Moon, is an installation made up of the word monkey in more than a dozen languages. Students create their own word-based works. This set of four lessons is divided into grades K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12. Younger students arrange cut-out letters into a picture. Older students create an animation.
Students will analyze images of tools that were used on rice plantations to determine each tool's purpose. These objects can tell us a great deal about slavery and the lives of the slaves who worked on rice plantations.
This lesson plan addresses the ways people learn about events from the past and discusses how historical accounts are influenced by the perspective of the person giving the account. To understand that history is made up of many people's stories of the past, students interview family members about the same event and compare the ifferent versions, construct a personal history timeline and connect it to larger historical events, and synthesize eyewitness testimony from different sources to create their own "official" account.