This classroom resource from Epic! is a book that helps students learn about maps and globes. Students can read about how maps and globes are similar, how they're different, and how they're used. The book includes a glossary, additional websites to visit, and a quiz.
This clip explains the impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on the Civil Rights Movement as well as Rosa Parks' role in the boycott. It mentions that the story behind the boycott is more complex, as Rosa Parks wasn't the first black person to resist bus segregation. Rather, there were several other women arrested for the same offense in the last 12 months, one of them being 15-year-old Claudette Colvin.
This website contains 5 primary resources students can use to help write an essay on Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
In this activity, students will build background knowledge of the Early European Explorers and their motives for exploring the New World. Students will learn that Europeans were on the search for spices and trade with the East Indies, but found the Americas instead. Students will become familiar with different explorers and pick one to research more in-depth.
This resource was created in partnership with Dothan City Schools.
In this lesson, students examine the gold nugget which began the California Gold Rush to understand the westward expansion and the idea of Manifest Destiny. This resource includes additional resources for the California Gold Rush.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, John Green teaches students that the Revolution did not start on July 4, 1776. The Revolutionary War didn't start on July 4 either. The shooting started on April 19, 1775, at Lexington and/or Concord, MA. Or the shooting started with the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. At least we can pin down the Declaration of Independence to July 4, 1776. Except that most of the signers didn't sign until August 2. The point is that the beginning of the Revolution is very complex and hard to pin down. John will lead you through the bramble of taxes, royal decrees, acts of parliament, colonial responses, and various congresses. We'll start with the end of the Seven Years War, and the bill that the British ran up fighting the war. This led to taxes on colonial trade, which led to colonists demanding representation, which led to revolution. It all seems very complicated, but Crash Course will get you through it in about 12 minutes.
**Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.
Xavier, Yandina, and Brad have a lively debate over who the best hero of all time is. They each have different ideas, but one thing they can all agree on is that whoever it is needs to have the most courage, which means they aren’t afraid of anything. Suddenly, whoosh – our trio find themselves in the Secret Museum! They’re sent back in time to meet someone who truly embodies what it means to be a hero: Harriet Tubman. Xavier, Yandina, and Brad follow along with Harriet as she bravely sneaks through the night as a young girl to see her family, despite her fear of being caught. They then watch in awe as an older Harriet bravely risks her own freedom so she can rescue others and lead them to freedom, too. Including her own parents. The answer to their question is suddenly clear: Harriet Tubman is one of the greatest heroes who ever lived, not because she wasn’t scared of anything, but because real courage is bravely moving forward even when you’re scared.
This free, interactive website helps middle and high school-aged students explore the effects of the Tennessee Valley Authority during World War II. The website includes videos, photographs, handouts, primary resources, and more.
This lesson provides information on how the Tennessee Valley Authority played a key role in helping the United States win World War II. Lesson plans are provided on the website including introductory activities and extension activities. Lesson plan powerpoints are also available. Full-length videos are provided on the website with video response questions as well as interactive graphics for student use.
After being introduced to the history of enslavement in class, students will reflect on their previous informational texts and class discussions to recall places associated with the slave trade. Students will recognize centers of slave trade by collaboratively indicating countries and continents that were involved in slavery and the trade of enslaved persons using an online digital tool (Padlet). Students will use the online digital tool to determine the three main areas of concentration that formed the Triangular Trade Routes (Europe, Africa, and the Americas).
This lesson will include the use of a primary document and period photographs for a cross-curriculum lesson analyzing setting to identify some adverse effects of the Great Depression for farmers. The student will create a postcard which depicts an understanding of the impact of the Great Depression on farmers.
This lesson was created as a part of the Alabama History Education Initiative, funded by a generous grant from the Malone Family Foundation in 2009.
Author Information: April Mitchell (Cohort 2: 2010-2011); Greenwood Elementary; Bessemer City Schools; Bessemer, AL
Students will view and manipulate an interactive map that shows documented arrival sites of enslaved persons in the United States. They will locate and identify areas with natural harbors, such as Mobile, New York, Boston, Savannah, etc., that served as arrival sites of slave ships and centers of the slave trade. Students will use a template to identify these natural harbors that served as arrival sites from the Middle Passage.
Students will develop an understanding of the purpose of the Declaration of Independence by synthesizing the grievances listed by the founding fathers.
In this activity, students will read about the Carnival in Ponce, Puerto Rico and about being a vejigante. Then, students will design their own Carnival costume.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, John Green teaches students about the Progressive Era in the United States. In the late 19th and early 20th century in America, there was a sense that things could be improved upon. A sense that reforms should be enacted. A sense that progress should be made. As a result, we got the Progressive Era, which has very little to do with automobile insurance, but a little to do with automobiles. All this overlapped with the Gilded Age and is a little confusing, but people were trying to solve some of the social problems that came with the benefits of industrial capitalism. While progress was being made and people were becoming freer, these gains were not equally distributed. Jim Crow laws were put in place in the south, and immigrant rights were restricted as well. So once again on Crash Course, things aren't so simple.
Join host John Green to learn about the reasons World War I started and why the situation is so complicated. We'll try to get to the bottom of the confusion. However, it's very hard to assign blame to any one of the nations involved. Did the fault lie with Austria-Hungary? Germany? Russia? Julius Caesar? Join us for an interesting discussion in this episode of Crash Course.
**Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.
In this reading passage, students learn about John F. Kennedy's reasons behind the "Space Race". "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." (from John F. Kennedy's Rice Stadium Moon Speech - September 12, 1962).
In this lesson, students will define conflict as it relates to Native American land conflict during the early nineteenth century. Students will compare Native Americans' and settlers' perspectives on land. Students will write a narrative writing as a Creek Chief watching the settlers move into their territory, focusing on how this makes them feel and how these events will change the lives of his/her people.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
In this unit, students explore a variety of resources—texts, images, sounds, photos, and other artifacts—to learn more about the Holocaust. Beginning with journal writings and a picture book to introduce the central issues, the unit focuses on student-centered inquiry. Students explore a range of print and non-print resources through extensive online inquiry activities. Progressing from individual work to a group learning project, the unit culminates in publishing the group's findings in topic-based newspapers.
The lesson includes complete lists of picture books, read-aloud books, reference texts, and online sites and collections that allow teachers to customize the activities to fit the available resources and students' specific research interests.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, John Green teaches students about what is often called the Reagan Era. John will teach you about Reagan's election victory over the hapless Jimmy Carter, tax cuts, Reagan's Economic Bill of Rights, union-busting, and the Iran-Contra scandal among other things. Learn about Reagan's domestic and foreign policy initiatives, and even a little about Bonzo the Chimp.
World War I drastically altered the global map and changed the course of history. Help students explore and analyze the war with this PBS NewsHour video and educational materials.
In this lesson, students will examine sources from a period known as Prohibition when the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages was outlawed nationwide to answer the question: What were arguments for prohibition? Students will read sections of the 18th Amendment, then analyze four other primary documents about Prohibition to answer the essential question. Students will then write a structured paragraph that answers the Central Historical Question.
The website includes lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, primary source documents, and student graphic organizers. Teachers will need to create a free account to access the materials.
This lesson will provide students with two primary documents, a drawing of a postal stagecoach and a newspaper article outlining the difficulties of mail delivery. Students will complete a graphic organizer to provide evidence that details a specific perspective described in the documents.
Students will examine the cultural and economic aspects of the early nineteenth century and will refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences. Students will be able to explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points of view.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
This interactive game from iCivics is a challenging game designed to sharpen students' news literacy skills. Students join a fictional social media site focused on news and information, learn elements of high-quality journalism and markers of deceptive posts, and spot dubious posts that sneak in through hidden ads, viral deception, and false reporting. This game can be played during a lesson on false reporting for reinforcement or after as an assessment. It can be played as a whole group or individually.
You will need to create a free account in order to access some of the content on this site.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, students learn the constitution’s Second Amendment says that individuals do have the right to keep and bear arms, for the purpose of personal defense in the home. "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
More About This ResourceThe Second Amendment was part of the Bill of Rights that was added to the Constitution on December 15, 1791.
John Green relates a condensed history of India, post-Indus Valley Civilization. John explores Hinduism and the origins of Buddhism. He also gets into the reign of Ashoka, the Buddhist emperor who, in spite of Buddhism's structural disapproval of violence, managed to win a bunch of battles.
While teaching a unit on WWII, the teacher will show two video clips to help students understand how the United States government's portrayal of Japanese American internment camps differed from the experience of the Japanese Americans living in these camps. The students will compare and contrast using a Venn diagram graphic organizer.
This activity results from the ALEX Resource Gap Project.
In this lesson, students will read and critically examine a letter from an Alabama farm owner to a U.S. Senator from Alabama regarding exemption status for the 1917 Selective Service Act on behalf of one of her workers. This primary source document will allow the students to practice evaluating a complex text. The students will answer active reading questions to participate in a "Philosophical Chairs" class debate regarding the merit of the farm owner's request. The Philosophical Chairs activity will allow the students to verbally articulate an argumentative position while specifically using textual evidence to be able to defend their position.
*Note: A bibliography of resources used can be found at the end of the "Lesson Procedures Section" of this lesson.
This lesson was created in partnership with the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
This is a video from Khan Academy on the Fourth Amendment which protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. This video can be used to introduce a lesson on the Bill of Rights. The video is 14 minutes and 12 seconds in length.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, students learn that the earliest forms of transportation in Alabama involved trails followed by animals and Native Americans. These trails lead to water, and Alabama rivers served as a gathering place for many early Indian settlements. It is along the paths of Native American trails that the first highway systems were developed.
John Green teaches you how Russia evolved from a loose amalgamation of medieval principalities known as the Kievan Rus into the thriving democracy we know today. As you can imagine, there were a few bumps along the road. It turns out, our old friends the Mongols had quite a lot to do with unifying Russia. In yet another example of how surprisingly organized nomadic raiders can be, the Mongols brought the Kievan Rus together under a single leadership and concentrated power in Moscow. This set the stage for the various Ivans (the Great and the Terrible) to throw off the yoke and form a pan-Russian nation ruled by an autocratic leader. More than 500 years later, we still have autocratic leadership in Russia. All this, plus a rundown of some of our favorite atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and a visit from Putin!
This learning activity is an engaging group activity using the website WordArt. The activity is best used after a lesson taught on the characteristics of a civilization. In the activity, the students will be assigned a civilization and create a word cloud using words that describe specific features from each of the 7 characteristics of that civilization. Then students will compare significant features of all four civilizations by comparing the common characteristics from their group's word clouds using a graphic organizer.
This activity was created as a result of the ALEX Resource Development Summit.
This is a collection of photographs depicting images from the early Mormon culture and their influence on the westward expansion. Be sure to click "Read More" at the top of the collection to view an activity that can be used with this collection.
This video is from History.com and explains what happened in the 1803 United States court case between William Marbury and James Madison. This video can be played before or during a lesson taught on key cases that helped shape the United States Supreme Court. The video is 3 minutes and 23 seconds in length.
In this video from PBSLearningMedia, Blossom and Snappy help Digit mail a surprise package to Robbie. They visit the post office and postal processing plant to see how it all works. For Americans, the postal service symbolizes the connection across vast distances that allows us to imagine a unified nation even as we are separated geographically, culturally, and politically. The principle of equal access to the mail—the fact that a letter to or from anywhere in the country costs $0.55—has made the postal system an icon of equality more broadly.
According to Sapp and Emplaincourt, there are five physiographic sections in Alabama, three belonging to the Appalachian Highlands Region, and one each to the Inland Plains and the Atlantic Plain Regions.
**There are external links to each region with more information.
