Help your writers get started with these hooks! Twenty-five opening lines from the "Lives" column in the New York Times Magazine act as prompts for creative writing. Have your learners choose one prompt and write an original essay....

Students view photographs from the Civil Rights Movement and write an essay from the point of view of someone in the photograph. They artistically represent various aspects of the Movement.

Fourth graders study slavery escape routes of the Underground Railroad on maps, read an account of an escape and then write narrative essays about a fictional slave's escape.

Sixth graders examine the use of slavery in the United States. Using a map, they draw the route of the Tecora and Amistad voyages. Individually, they write an essay describing their opinions on whether the Africans on the ships should be...