This Holocaust curriculum project is designed for a 10th grade world cultures class that meets for 80 minutes per day during one semester. The students use selected primary sources including poems, diary excerpts, and a short novel written by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. They also examine profiles about the rescuers. Additional…

The Making of America (MoA) Testbed Project, coordinated by the Digital Library Federation, is a multi-phase endeavor. Its purpose is to investigate important issues in the creation of an integrated but distributed digital library of archival materials (i.e., digitized surrogates of primary source materials found in archives and special…

Paterson, New Jersey, was established in the 1790s to utilize the power of the water that cascades through the Passaic River Gorge. Massive brick mill buildings lined the canals that transformed the power of the falls into energy to drive machines. These mills manufactured many things during the history of this industrial city. In the late 19th…

This teaching unit, "Settlement Unit,"which focuses on the settlement of Alabama's land, is the second in a series of 10 units about Alabama state history, part of a project designed to help teachers integrate the use of primary source materials into their classrooms. Although the units are designed to augment the study of Alabama, they…

This packet provides primary source documents and lesson plans relating to the study of Jackie Robinson as a civil rights advocate. The legendary baseball player, Jack Roosevelt Robinson, was the first black man to "officially" play in the big leagues in the 20th century. Jackie Robinson was not only a stellar baseball player, but he…

The Fall 2003 Idea Book features: "Save Our History Study Guide: Our Documents"; "History International Study Guide: Pyramids"; "The History Channel Study Guide: Lewis and Clark" (Ideas from Our Teachers Contest Rules; Ideas from Our Teachers Context Winners); "A&E Classroom Study Guide: Post…

Beginning a journey mid-May 1804, what became known as the Corps of Discovery, under the command of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, set out to investigate the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, locate a water route to the Pacific Ocean, and strengthen U.S. claims to the northwest. The 55-member group navigated a variety of terrains and…

Wilbur and Orville Wright undertook the first test airplane flight on December 17, 1903, at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Their success represented the culmination of four years of painstaking research and trials in which they designed and improved their flying machines at home in Dayton, Ohio, and tested them each year near Kitty Hawk, North…

Arizona's archives, libraries, and museums contain a wealth of source material that can be applied to local, regional, and national topics pertaining to the 2003 National History Day theme, rights and responsibilities. Repositories from around the state share ideas and resources that are available to National History Day students. So that…

"The Merchant of Venice," even in its own time, was considered William Shakespeare's most controversial play. Now, one of the most popular read and performed works, the play raises even more important issues for today, particularly anti-Semitism and the treatment of Jews. The analysis of the play in this casebook helps students interpret…

This report shows how the study of U.S. history can be enriched by blending geography into the curriculum. Because the fields of history and geography have not been melded together in terms of curricula, often history is not taught in relation to geography and geography has tended to be taught primarily as location/place information. The report…

These texts are part of a continuing series on current and historical international issues, placing special emphasis on the importance of educating students in their participatory role as citizens. They evaluate the U.S. relationship with poor countries, particularly the effectiveness of foreign aid, trade benefits, and other economic levers; and…

Using primary documents, maps, and visual data, this lesson packet focuses on the founders of Ontario, California, and the Frankish Building that is on the Historic Register of Historic Places. The lesson could be used with U.S. history units on the Progressive Era, with course units dealing with a variety of civic issues, or units involving the…

In this lesson, students work with primary documents and latter-day photographs to recapture the experience of traveling on the Oregon Trail. The learning objectives of the lesson are: (1) to learn about the pioneer experience on the Oregon Trail; (2) to evaluate a historical re-enactment in light of documentary evidence; and (3) to synthesize…

The excavated foundations of various structures in Frederica, Saint Simons Island, Georgia, remind visitors that from 1736 until 1758, this planned community served the military garrison quartered there and housed a population of 1000. This lesson is based on the Fort Frederica National Monument listed in the National Register of Historic Places.…