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For the Fun of It
Learners view pictures of Amelia Earhart and discuss the social and historical context of her life. They read excerpts of Earhart's autobiography "The Fun of It" and analyze her purpose in writing it.
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
I Need a Superhero
Once the class learns about the hero's journey, they'll find it in every story and movie they see! Take characters from their humble beginnings to their atonement and apotheosis with a set of lessons about the hero's journey focusing...
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Ellis Island Online
Students research their ancestors by visiting a number of online resources. They read personal immigration stories and begin creating their own family tree.
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Technology: The State of the Internet
Students develop ratings criteria for evaluating Websites. Once they brainstorm lists of qualities for Websites, students, in pairs, browse various Maine Websites and create evaluation systems. As a follow-up activity, students may...
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Gatsby and the American Twenties Newspaper
Students research 1920's US History. In this historical literature lesson plan, students use the novel The Great Gatsby as a tool to examine the era. They work in individually to create newspaper articles based on different historical...
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Front Page News
Students collect and analyze the front pages of various newspapers and perform research on the Titantic tragedy. They choose a name for their newspaper, a headline, gather photographs, and write a front page article. Using computer...
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Colonial Migration
Students, in groups, create a student book for an assigned group of immigrants to the Colonial United States (Huguenots, Scots, Irish, Africans.) They create drawings for the book and rhyming text that depicts three struggles that...
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Collars, Curtains and Kings: Exploring the History of Lace
Students design to explore the world of objects as related to lace. Students will create a lace mural highlighting what they learn about the world of lace. Students brainstorm ideas via the internet websites.
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Commemoration of the Gettysburg Battlefield
Students use a multimedia project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two American Communities in the Civil War, to create a presentation about the significance of the Gettysburg Address. They work on expert teams to explore the interactive...
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A Tale of Two Wars
Students create Venn diagrams comparing and contrasting the Vietnam and Iraq wars. They write informed letters to their senators expressing their opinions and possible solutions to the war. They also create mock bumper stickers...
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Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick
Students compare/contrast the Hollywood film industry of the 30s and 40s with Hollywood today. They watch a video on David O. Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock, conduct Internet research, and create a poster to present their findings.
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It's a Draw!
Students assess the ways in which editorial cartoons, both current and historic, offer insight into events that shape our world. They create a poster that includes a current editorial cartoon and their explanation of the details of the...
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Current Events - Attack on America
Students explore and discuss significance of what happened to the world on 9-11-01, and create a paper quilt.
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Lesson Ideas to Enrich Student Inquiry into the Holocaust
Students inquire about the Holocaust. In this Holocaust lesson, students read books and discuss their thoughts. Students also collect current event articles from newspapers. Students investigate ghettos, Pearl Harbor and Navajo Code...
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A Colony is Born : Lesson 6 -To Leave or Not to Leave
Fifth graders connect reasons for coming to the New World with identity. The create identities and place them in one of three settled regions. They refer to prior study notes in their Colonial Notebooks to establish their identities.
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Walter Cronkite: Witness to History
Students brainstorm a list of news sources. They interview people about today's media and discuss their results. After watching segments of a film about Walter Cronkite, they role play as reporters and subjects from an historic period...
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Overcoming Censorship Through Art
Students create an art piece that expresses their opinions while circumventing hypothetical government restrictions in this instructional activity on art and government censorship. Emphasis is placed upon historical instances of...
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County Chronicles
Learners review and use the information from previous lessons about their county. In groups, they write articles for various sections of a class newspaper. They review and edit each others work and publish their newspaper using a desktop...
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Canada's Press: Making a Historical Newspaper
Young scholars examine several colonial-era editorial cartoons. They evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques the cartoonists used to display their messages and share one editorial cartoon with the class emphasising what message has...
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Germans and Irish in Augusta and Franklin Counties
High schoolers examine 19th century newspapers, a last and testament, and census manuscripts to analyze the Irish and German immigrant communities in the 1850s and 1860s. They write a letter from the perspective of an Irish or German...
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Prairie Voices: Community Development, Investigating Local History
Students investigate local history. In this research skills lesson, students examine historic landmarks, tax records, fire maps, town plans, historic photographs, newspapers, and other primary sources to learn about local communities in...
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Weather Timeline
Pupils create a timeline of historical weather events in Bedfordshire, England. In this local weather lesson, students interview elders, research the Internet and newspapers to gather information about weather events of the past. the...
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Local and Global Sustainability Unit
Students examine the characteristics that define a sustainable community at the local and global level. They create and prioritize a list of traits, read and discuss a magazine article, and create a poster.
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What Can We Discover About Colorado?
Students locate Colorado and its neighbors on a map (either in a book or on the Internet). They create a graphic that illustrates what they know and want to know about the state (KWL); finally, they draw and label Louisiana maps.