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Lesson Plan
Judicial Branch of California

The Constitution: What It Says and What It Means

For Teachers 5th Standards
Learners get the chance to act as representatives to the Constitution Convention, and must decide whether or not to recommend your state ratify the new framework. After examining the Constitution line-by-line, they consider their...
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Lesson Plan
Judicial Branch of California

Planet Fourth Grade is Researching the U.S. Constitution

For Teachers 4th Standards
Using the Constitutional Convention as a model, learners create their own governments. Other activities to explore the American Constitution include creating posters to help explain the Bill of Rights. 
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Lesson Plan
K20 LEARN

Electoral College: Does My Vote Count?

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
How can a candidate get the most votes, yet still lose the race for the presidency? This is has happened more than once in American history, including in the elections of 2000 and 2016. Using an activity for creating group notes, young...
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Lesson Plan
Judicial Branch of California

The U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights

For Teachers 4th Standards
Using discussion questions and a poster-creating activity, learners explore how the framework of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights help create safe communities. After listening to a song about the preamble and reading the Bill of...
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Interactive
PBS

Why Should Women Vote? The Suffrage Question

For Students 6th - Higher Ed
An online interactive activity asks learners to analyze a group of documents related to the women's suffrage movement and then place the documents on a timeline. The results assess users understanding of the progression of the women's...
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Lesson Plan
Constitutional Rights Foundation

The Debate Over Gun Laws in the United States – An Introduction

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Gun control is one of the most hotly debated topics in the United States. Learners use a structured conversation to engage around this controversy. Using a scaffolded conversation that relies on a reading and analysis of arguments for...
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Activity
Constitutional Rights Foundation

The Troubled Elections of 1796 and 1800

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
Congress does more than create new laws. Political scientists delve into the elections of 1796 and 1800 to understand how political parties, the Electoral College, and personal agendas affected the election process. The resource also...
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Lesson Plan
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C-SPAN

Presidential Veto and Congressional Override

For Teachers 6th - 8th
One of the key powers of the executive branch is the president's ability to pass or veto legislation proposed by Congress. Congress, the legislative branch, on the other hand, can override a president's veto. Five film clips show how the...
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Graphic
PBS

Library of Congress: Media Gallery | Women's Suffrage

For Students 6th - Higher Ed
Designed to support a study of women's suffrage in the United States, a primary source document set from the Library of Congress includes images, song sheets, articles, statistical documents, political cartoon, and audio recordings...
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Lesson Plan
PBS

Civic Engagement and How Students Can Get Involved

For Teachers 6th - 12th Standards
There is no age limit on civic engagement. Even if your pupils are not old enough to vote, they are old enough to get involved. Show them how with a PBS lesson that underscores the importance of civic participation and models ways young...
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Lesson Plan
1
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Facing History and Ourselves

Free Press Makes Democracy Work

For Teachers 9th - 12th
A unit study of the importance of a free press in a democracy begins with class members listening to a podcast featuring two journalists, one from a United States public radio station and one from Capetown, South Africa. The lesson,...
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Lesson Plan
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Facing History and Ourselves

A Contested History

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Memories of and interpretations of history change—that's the key takeaway from a lesson that has young historians compare the story of the Reconstruction Era as told by the historians of the Dunning School to the view of scholars today...
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Lesson Plan
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Facing History and Ourselves

Interracial Democracy

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Radical Reconstruction, the 10-year period referred to after Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, saw the establishment of manhood suffrage, men voting without any racial qualifications. Southern states also rewrote their...
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Lesson Plan
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Facing History and Ourselves

Violence and Backlash

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Revolution and counterrevolution. Protest and counter-protest. Collaborators and bystanders. The focus of the fifth resource in the Reconstruction Era and Fragility of Democracy series is on the political violence that followed Radical...
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Lesson Plan
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Teaching Tolerance

Jim Crow as a Form of Racialized Social Control

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Just because slavery was illegal doesn't mean it went away ... Jim Crow Laws took its place. An eye-opening lesson focuses on how Jim Crow Laws were used as a form of racial social control against African Americans in the United States....
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Lesson Plan
Teaching Tolerance

Understanding Other Religious Beliefs

For Teachers 3rd - 5th Standards
Learn what it means to respect others in an engaging instructional activity on religious beliefs. An inclusive resource focuses on understanding other religious beliefs, the right to freedom of religion, and the U.S. history of religious...
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Evaluating the New Departure Strategy in the Fight for Women's Suffrage

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
When women demanded their right to vote, did the Constitution already protect it? The New Departure Strategy in the women's suffrage movement made this claim through court hearings. Using documents, such as transcripts from Susan B....
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Letter to President Abraham Lincoln from Annie Davis

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
What freed enslaved people? The answer, it turns out, is complicated. Using a set of online documents and writing prompts, young historians examine a series of primary sources, including a letter from a woman asking if she was freed and...
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Analyzing a Petition about Slavery

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Practice analyzing primary sources in a thought-provoking lesson on the impact of slavery. Young historians read a petition regarding the Fugitive Slave Law and answer a series of questions to understand the importance of the document....
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Mrs. Bloomer's 'Political Disability'

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
It's hard to believe that women had to argue for the right to vote a mere 100 years ago. Today, young historians can examine their case left behind in primary sources. Using a letter from a woman who claimed she should be able to vote...
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony: Petitioning for the Right to Vote

For Teachers 3rd - 5th Standards
What is the best way to get a point across: a petition or a protest? Using primary sources, including a petition from Susan B. Anthony and a photo of a White House protest from the early 1900s, young historians examine what women did to...
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Interactive
DocsTeach

Why Did Women Want the Right to Vote?

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
No taxation without representation may have been the battle cry of the American Revolution, but women used the same argument when demanding their right to vote in the late 1800 and early 1900s. Young historians examine petitions from...
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Lesson Plan
Jane Addams Project

Woman Suffrage

For Students 9th - 12th Standards
Suffragettes, suffragists, and anti-suffragists. A two-day, richly detailed lesson plan has young historians investigate the twentieth-century suffrage movement. Groups examine primary and secondary source materials about Jane Addams and...
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Activity
Digital Public Library of America

The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
A primary source set of photographs, videos, newspaper articles, and FBI reports provides insight into race relations during the 1960s, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, and the murder of Emmitt Till. Designed to be used to...

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