This resource provides students with an English language video and associated student friendly readings (in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole), as well as reading and video guides and self assessment tools. Using these, students will consider the different ways that citizens, interest groups, and the media can influence and monitor government.
Free registration is required to use the resource.
Arguing Arkansas: Analyzing the Impact of Eisenhower’s Little Rock Speech
This lesson, developed in collaboration with the National Archives, has students explore a number of primary sources, all connected to the events at Little Rock High School. It asks students to consider how the events at Little Rock may or may not have been impacted by the words and leadership of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
What are my First Amendment Rights? A Lesson for Early Elementary
This lesson will introduce to young citizens their First Amendment rights. They will consider examples of the First Amendment, and describe what this looks like in their own lives.
The Vietnam War Lesson Guide
Explore classroom lesson plans related to Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s 10-part, 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War, which tells the story of one of the most consequential, divisive and controversial events in American history. The series explores the human dimensions of the war through the testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides.
Why Do People Form Governments?
This short lesson, targeting early elementary, is intended to introduce students to the concept of government and how one of the most important purposes of government is to keep us safe. Students will also be introduced to the Constitution and the three branches of government.
Forward to the Future: The Declaration of Independence in Our Lives
Essential Question: How are the ideas from the Declaration of Independence connected to our government today?
In this lesson, developed in collaboration with the National Archives, students will work through stations, considering various primary documents, in order to answer the essential question.
American Reformers (CKHG Unit)
This unit (the second part of Early Presidents and Social Reformers) focuses on the efforts to improve American society in the early 1800s. Across 6 lessons, students learn about the temperance movement, free public education, the abolitionists’ crusade to abolish slavery, and the early women’s rights movement. The unit explores early reformers’ legacy in ongoing modern-day struggles for equality and civil rights.
Early Presidents (CKHG Unit)
This unit (first half of Early Presidents and Social Reformers) focuses on the first seven presidents of the United States. Across 9 lessons, students learn about how the early presidents organized the federal government, built a national capital, directed a second war with Great Britain, more than doubled the size of the country, and formulated a “hands-off” foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.
The Thirteen Colonies (CKHG Unit)
This unit explores the development of three regions of English colonies using primary source documents and imaginative narratives. Across 35 lessons, students explore Jamestown, labor by indentured servants, and the reliance on enslaved workers in the southern colonies, look at the motives influencing the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England and the financial and religious reasons for settling the Middle Colonies.
The American Revolution (CKHG Unit)
This unit begins by providing background information on the establishment of the thirteen colonies. Across 25 lessons, students learn about early alliances, the French and Indian War, and causes and provocations of the American Revolution. Students are introduced to major ideas in the Declaration of Independence and to key figures in the Revolution, as well as art and literature representative of the period.
Includes 25 lessons of roughly 45 minutes each.