Minnie Bruce Pratt's poem, "The Great Migration," offers young scholars an opportunity to reflect on how where we come from influences who we are. Groups conduct a close reading of the poem, recording observations about the poem's...

What would make someone leave home and travel thousands of miles to find another one? Young historians look at letters, demographic data, and artwork to answer the question for the Great Migration, or the movement of thousands of African...

Get the story straight. Scholars gather information about the Great Migration as they listen to a reading from Promises to Keep. They then examine the text to find evidence to support the feeling of resentment. Learners take part in...

Panel 58 from Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series" of paintings provides middle schoolers with an opportunity to sharpen their observation and analytical skills. After engaging in a warm-up activity that introduces the concepts of...

Turn your students into flocks of migratory birds for this fun activity on animal migration. Prior to the activity, the teacher creates four different migration routes in the classroom or any available open space, labeling nesting...

What were living conditions like in the United States during The Great Depression, and how do those conditions compare with today? That's the question young scholars consider as they prepare to read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men....

The 41 slides in a professional development seminar model how to use close reading techniques to examine the many layers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In addition to passages from the novel, slides provide biographical...

A reading of Walter Dean Myers' "Harlem" sets the stage for studying the literature, art, and music of the Harlem Renaissance. The instructional activity begins with a review of the social, political, and economic conditions of the 1920s...

A 10-lesson unit takes young historians through a study of The Great Depression and life in the 1930s. The crash of the stock market, the Dust Bowl, unemployment, and mass migration west are all addressed through the analysis of primary...

The children's book Humphrey the Lost Whale tells an amazing tale of a community joining together for a common cause. Read this book with your class, making connections between the events in the story and personal experiences of...

Music, writing, and activism all tell the story of history! The resource uses these elements and more in a presentation to discuss the Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance. Your class views biographies, discusses important events, and...

Winter in the cold Northwoods of Wisconsin can be hard on animals that aren't adapted to the climate. Investigate the animals that are out and about even in the coldest winter temperatures as you and your class examine animal...

Jazz and the City, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz and Gender, Jazz and Literature, Jazz and the Arts, Jazz and Film. Here's a packet of unit plans organized around themes that reflect American culture. Each unit examines how...

The third instructional activity in a unit that traces the history of African Americans serving in the US Congress examines the period from 1929 through 1970. After reading a contextual essay that details the few African Americans...

A fiction and nonfiction text, The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry and I See a Kookaburra! Discovering Animal Habitats Around the World by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page begins a learning experience in...

Why did African American voters switch from the Republican Party to the Democratic party during the Depression Era? That is the question young historians attempt to answer as they study primary source documents from the period. The focus...

Despite some advances made during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War, the period from 1887 through 1929, African Americans serving in Congress suffered severe setbacks due to Jim Crow Laws and voter suppression. Class members...

Groups select a photograph from one of the four eras of African Americans in Congress and develop a five-minute presentation that provides background information about the image as well as its historical significance. The class compares...

"Redlining," "Blockbusting," and "White Flight" may not be terms familiar to young historians. Here's a lesson plan that introduces middle schoolers to these terms and the actions associated with them. Class members examine a series of...

Imagine the lure of being offered a job at a secret site, working on a secret project, and earning higher wages! Such was the approach used to recruit African Americans to Hanford, Washington, one of several sites used to develop...

The Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote—as long as they were white. High schoolers read articles and essays about racism in the suffrage movement and consider how intersectionality played a role in the movement. Scholars...

Introduce your seventh graders to the Harlem Renaissance with a unit that explores this dynamic period's music, literature, and ideas. The 160-page guide includes a unit calendar, an introduction to the unit, 10 richly detailed lessons...

June 19 is now a United States federal holiday. Young historians examine the background of the first Juneteenth celebrations and why on June 15, 2021, Congress finally approved "Juneteenth National Independence Day" as a federal holiday.

Facts about tigers are packed into a PowerPoint presentation about tigers. The presentation includes great photographs and accompanying text regarding the habitats, diet, lifespan, and physical attributes of tigers. Very interesting!