There's no better way to learn something than to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. A handout on oral history, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, explains how to conduct interviews and use the information...

Young scholars gain insight into how historians record events by engaging in an oral history project. In preparation, class members brainstorm open-ended interview questions and take part in and debrief a mock interview simulation....

Empowered by the previous instructional activity where they interviewed a family or community member, young historians examine Angel Island immigrants' oral histories. They use a matrix to record their interpretation of the feelings of...

Discover the family histories that make the classroom with a family tree activity. Scholars locate information about their family, construct a family tree, and work together to tally where family members are born.  

The Navajo people build their dwellings with the doors facing the rising sun in the east to welcome wealth and fortune. Pupils learn about the traditions of the Navajo people in the first part of a 16-part unit. They explore American...

Class members explore cultural diversity through a variety of texts that showcase the importance of traditions. Then, they interview their family members to research their own cultural background and write their findings on quilt...

StoryCorp provides a resource that captures and preserves the remembrances of family or community elders. Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, class members select a person they want to interview, record the conversation, and then upload...

After viewing The Last Roundup, a documentary that examines the transitioning of Santa Rosa from a privately owned island to a National Park, class members adopt the point of view of Tim Vail, a member of the family that once owned the...

Middle schoolers consider languages as representations of cultures and the importance of preserving various languages, especially the rapidly disappearing languages of indigenous peoples, in a activity that tells the story of Marie...

In a lesson that integrates history and mathematics, class members create graphs that compare military death statistics from World War I with those that resulted from the influenza pandemic of 1918.

Discover how writers express identity in their writing. Learners explore how issues of identity surface in the literature of minority writers. Scholars watch a video, read and discuss biographies, conduct research, engage in creative...

Young historians discover African stories associated with a royal altar tusk from the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria, read myths illustrated on the tusk, and write a story about the life of an oba using figures depicted on the tusk.

The I-STOP law was designed to regulate the distribution and tracking of prescription drugs. After reading an article about its signing and implementation, middle and high schoolers work together to come up with their own ideas for an...

Malice aforethought? Can the New York Times be held libel for false claims appearing in its ads? The Supreme Court case New York Times v Sullivan changed the interpretation of the First Amendment. Class members examine these changes and...