Provides a lesson plan designed to help students better understand the concept of a constitution, distinguish constitutional law from statutory law, and recognize examples of constitutional government. (BSR)

Presents a plan for a lesson designed to introduce a unit on Indian history. Focuses on ethnocentrism and assimilation and how these concepts apply to the situations of Indians as revealed in several quotations. Provides a list of some quotations and suggested activities. (AEM)

Presents a lesson plan using "Decision at Richmond," a play dramatizing the debate over United States Constitutional ratification, to demonstrate to students the importance of the unique process used to make political decisions in the United States. (Author/AEM)

Presents a lesson plan which shows how to integrate primary source material gathered during a field trip to a local historical society into a history or social studies class. Includes primary source material from an 1825 diary and a list of discussion questions. (JDH)

This article describes the modern-day equivalent prices of items Captain John Smith required for colonists traveling from England to Virginia in 1624. Includes information on wages and cost of living in 1624 and today in the United States. Concludes that the colonists paid a high price for traveling to the New World. (JDH)

Provides a two-day lesson plan that helps students examine the unrecognized role women played during the Revolutionary War and their total absence during the Constitutional Convention. (BSR)

Presents a lesson plan designed to make students empathize with early twentieth-century native Americans as they draft a provisional statement of goals for the nation's first secular inter-tribal native organization, the Society of American Indians, founded in 1911. (Author/AEM)

This simulation for secondary students takes place in 1858 in Jackson, Mississippi. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American abolitionist, has been apprehended. A street trial is convened to hear charges against her. Students role-play accusors and witnesses for the defense. (RM)

In this activity high school students read and discuss a letter written by a fugitive slave in England asking Britons not to be misled by a statement made by a clergyman claiming that the American federal government was not responsible for slavery, that it was the individual states that were at fault. (RM)

Reviews a Document Reading Activity Packet (DRAP) revolving around the "Fort Washington Incident" of the War of 1812 and the resulting court martial of Captain Samuel T. Dyson. Explains this exercise is designed to stimulate students' interest in their own state histories as well as stimulate their curiosity for further research. (BSR)

In this lesson, high school students read quotes and relate them to events that took place in the 1960s. Provided are the quotes, discussion questions, and suggestions for class activities. (RM)

Incorporates material from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's into the high school curriculum as part of a unit on the Reconstruction Era. Discusses the background and passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the beginning of Jim Crow laws as precursors to the Civil Rights Movement. (KO)

Summarizes the events leading up to and the investigation that followed the Watergate break-in. Presents a lesson plan using primary documents that allows students to explore the workings of congressional investigations, the key figures in the scandal, and the arguments of the different participants. Includes copies of the documents. (DSK)

Describes a living history museum called Old Sturbridge Village, located in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Includes samples of student's work, a description of the three-week teacher inservice program on social history, and original source material on the day-to-day lives of the Pliny Freeman family during the late 1700s and early 1800s. (JDH)

Presents a basic lesson on the complex problems of judicial interpretation for a high-school government survey. Includes lesson objectives, background on lesson design, overview information for students, a list of student materials, expected time for lesson, procedural outline, bibliography, and two student handouts. (DSK)