This online textbook is designed for grade 8 and up and covers all of North Carolina history, from the arrival of the first people some 12,000 years ago to the present. There are eleven parts, organized chronologically, a collection of primary sources, readings, and multimedia that can be rearranged to meet the needs of the classroom. Special web-based tools aid reading and model historical inquiry, helping students build critical thinking and literacy skills.

Containing more than 50 articles from the award-winning Tar Heel Junior Historian magazine and over 40 lesson plans, this multidisciplinary Educator Notebook will enrich your exploration of North Carolina and American history with diverse perspectives. This resource's link takes you to a very short form that gives you free downloadable access to the complete PDF book.

In this lesson, students work in cooperative groups to prepare presentations on business organization and Big Business during the second part of the Industrial Revolution (1860-1910) in the United States.

In this lesson, students will analyze editorial cartoons that will enable them to explain the abuses of big business and determine the effects of their abuses. Students will identify the role of labor unions in
American society and better understand the role of government in the free enterprise system.

In this lesson, students learn about the role and functions of the Federal Reserve System. They participate in an activity to learn how the purchase or sale of U.S. Treasury securities affects the supply of money and credit in the economy. Finally, they discuss what the Fed learned about implementing monetary policy as a result of the Great Depression.

In this lesson, students examine statistical data related to the Great Depression, identify problems and offer solutions. Students reflect on the course of action taken by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and focus on New Deal programs. Students classify New Deal programs as relief, reform or recovery and analyze the effects of these programs on the unemployment rate, government spending, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the role of government in the economy.

In this activity, students study an image and answer a series of questions. The questions are designed to guide students into a deeper analysis of the source and sharpen associated cognitive skills.

In this activity students read two letters (one from Hoover, one from FDR) to determine different political beliefs that guided the presidents in their responses to the Great Depression.

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.

Students will see and read about the differences in food manufacturing practices before and after the new food laws passed in 1906: the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.

In this lesson, students will be asked to analyze and evaluate editorial cartoons regarding the Energy Crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. Students are expected to determine tools the cartoonists use to express his or her opinion. Students will compare and contrast the Energy Crisis with the energy problems of today (2007).

In this lesson, students learn that economic forces have an impact beyond the financial world. First, they learn that Progressive Era public health reforms inspired a commercial response to the growing demand for sanitation through the rapid increase in bathroom-fixture production. Students then use FRED, economic data from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, to analyze how bathroom-fixture production changed throughout the 1920s. They examine primary documents—1920s advertising—to see how companies fused the Progressive Era with the new consumer culture. Finally, students complete the lesson by responding to AP U.S. History-style short-answer questions.

In this lesson, students read about anti-New Deal decisions by the Supreme Court and President Roosevelt's response. A set of discussion questions is provided. In an associated activity, students examine Supreme Court reform proposals and decide if any of them should be adopted today.

In this lesson, students will use multiple sources to develop arguments about the effectiveness of FDR's Relief, Recovery and Reform programs toward environmental preservation.

In this activity students learn about the goals of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the opportunities it provided for young men. Students create poster presentations about different aspects of the CCC by combining photographs and quotes from primary sources. Students will need poster-making supplies (including poster board or paper, markers, scissors, and glue/markers).

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.

In this activity, students study a series of photographs from the Depression era and answer a series of questions. The questions are designed to guide students into a deeper analysis of the source and sharpen associated cognitive skills.

In this lesson, students will identify the themes within political cartoons from the Great Depression Era and identify the perceived role of political parties during the depression, the programs used for recovery, and the resistance to change of the Great Depression Era. Students will identify the cartoonists' intentions and evaluate the effectiveness of each cartoon's message.

The goal of this inquiry is help students understand the central debate about the government’s role in fostering economic opportunity over the past half century. As this is a historical inquiry, it focuses on the motivations, actions, and impacts of two particular US presidents: Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. Their economic programs stand in for the larger argument that persists today between liberal and conservative approaches to federal economic policy. Thus, the compelling question “How should the president foster economic opportunity?” is intentionally timeless to emphasize its relevance today. Students look at Johnson’s and Reagan’s visions for the economy, the policies they advanced to achieve their visions, and modern interpretations of each president’s legacy.

How shall we judge the contributions to American society of the great financiers and industrialists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries? In this lesson, students explore a variety of primary historical sources to uncover some of the less honorable deeds as well as the shrewd business moves and highly charitable acts of the great industrialists and financiers, men such as Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.