The Library of Congress | |
Title | Grades | Description | Themes, Topics, Disciplines or Eras | ||
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1900 America: Historical Voices, Poetic Visions | 10-12 | Using Walt Whitman's
Song of Myself and Hart Crane's The Bridge as models, students work
in groups to express themselves creatively through a multi-media epic poem. |
Literature/Poetry Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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9-12 | Students identify problems and issues facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction using text based sources. |
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877 |
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11-12 | Students examine the interplay between national, state, local, and personal history. Students produce a digital collection of primary sources from their family or local community based on the collections in American Memory. |
Civics and Government |
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9-12 | Students analyze items and images of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 and question what these things said about America. |
Civil War and Reconstruction,1861-1877 |
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4-12 | Students complete an interdisciplinary WebQuest to learn the story of a decade in American history, as they help define the American Dream. |
The New Nation, 1783-1815 |
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6-9 | Students plan, take, and document a trip around the world in 1896 using the collection, Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896. |
Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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4-6 | This staff development workshop, coupled with student lessons, introduces the use of primary resources where to find them, what they are, how to examine them, and how to "construct the context" to tell the whole story. |
Primary Sources |
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The Bill of Rights: Debating the Amendments
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6-12 | Students examine a copy of twelve possible amendments to the United States Constitution from 1789, and debate and vote on which of these amendments they would ratify to produce a Bill of Rights. |
The New Nation, 1783-1815 |
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10 | Students investigate the circumstances and lives of those who endured the Great Depression and received relief from New Deal programs. |
Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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6-12 | Students critically examine, respond to and report on photographs as historical evidence. Focus on the work of reformer/photographer Lewis Hine's photographs of child labor. |
Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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The Civil War through a Child's Eye
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6-8 | Students use literature and photographs to view the Civil War from a child's perspective. |
Literature/Poetry Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877 |
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9-12 | Two separate lessons for students to investigate conservation. The Hetch Hetchy dam project serves as an example for students to debate the controversies inherent in conservation programs. |
Civics and Government |
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The Constitution: Counter Revolution or National Salvation?
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11 | Students will access primary documents, identify arguments for and against the ratification of the Constitution, and produce a broadside in which they take a position on whether their state should ratify the Constitution. |
Civics and Government |
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The Constitution: Drafting a More Perfect Union
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9-12 | This lesson focuses on the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 in Philadelphia. Students examine George Washington’s annotated copy of an early draft to analyze changes and explore the evolution of the final document. |
The New Nation, 1783-1815 |
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6-12 | Students argue Thomas Jefferson's intentions in stating "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. |
Civics and Goverment The New Nation, 1783-1815 |
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The Declaration of Independence: From Rough Draft to Proclamation
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6-12 | Students analyze Thomas Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, compare its text to that of the final document adopted by Congress, and discuss the significance of wording differences. |
The American Revolution, 1763-1783 |
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6-12 | Students create multimedia projects based on their investigation of various social and economic themes between 1890-1940. |
Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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6-8 | Students use passages from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, along with various history texts, discussions of their experiences, and primary source documents and images from the American Memory collections, to uncover the common themes of the immigrant experience. |
Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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Drake’s West Indian Voyage 1588-1589 | 6-8 | Students investigate a series of maps depicting a voyage by Sir Francis Drake which involved attacks on Spanish settlements around the Atlantic. Students look closely at the details of each of these depictions and draw conclusions about the individual events as well as the entire voyage. | Three Worlds Meet, Beginnings to 1620 |
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Enhancing a Poetry Unit with American Memory
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7-9 | Students create poetry based on the language found in Depression Era oral histories. |
Literature/Poetry Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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The Evolution of the Book: Introducing Students to Visual Analysis | 4-8 | Students develop visual literacy skills by analyzing the images from John White Alexander’s mural in the Thomas Jefferson building. | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 |
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8-12 | Students are introduced to historical perspectives of nature and the environment, from which they produce a research paper addressing the history of a local environmental issue. |
Civics and Government |
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6-12 | Students investigate rituals and customs of various cultures. They then explore their own cultural rituals through interviews with family. |
Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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Exploring Community Through Local History: Oral Stories, Landmarks and Traditions
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9-12 | Students explore the local history of their own community to learn the value of local culture and traditions as primary sources. They relate stories, landmarks and traditions of their community to history, place and environment. |
Civics and Government Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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Figuring Somepin 'Bout the Great Depression
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10-12 | Students create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker. This lesson can be used in connection with a unit on The Grapes of Wrath. |
Literature/Poetry Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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9-12 | Students explore the era of legalized segregation. The unit's culminating activity is the creation of a meeting similar to the Afro-American Council prior to the Brown case in 1954. |
Civics and Government |
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8-12 | Students engage in three lessons examining George Washington's leadership in the French and Indian War, at the Federal Convention, and as chief executive. |
Civics and Government |
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German
Immigrants: Their Contributions to the Upper Midwest
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7-12 | Students explore German immigration to the Upper Midwest in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, while strengthening their German language skills. |
Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929 |
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Grandparent/Elder Project | 7-12 | Students analyze primary sources from
American Memory and then interview a grandparent or significant elder in order
to provide a human face for life in the twentieth century. |
Progressive Era to New Era,
1900-1929 Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 |
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The Grapes of Wrath - Scrapbooks and Artifacts | 11-12 | Students conduct ethnographic research to show how
cultural artifacts from The Grapes of Wrath support one of the book's many themes.
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Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 | ||
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7-11 | Students analyze information from oral histories, personal interviews, and current legislation, to gain a better understanding of why the government takes care of its people and how this type of welfare state started. Students can then evaluate the current need of government programs. |
Civics and Government Great Depression/World War II, 1929-1945 Contemporary United States, 1968-present |
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Last updated 12/12/2008 |