HERB: Resources for Teachers

Rights in Early America

In this activity, students are assigned roles as different members of early American society and move to different areas of the classroom according to whether they could always/sometimes/never exercise different rights in the 1770s and 1780s. This activity helps students understand different rights and privileges and helps set up the document-based…

Tags: Civil Rights and Citizenship, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity, TAH, Voting
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Analysis of "Showing the Light to the Filipinos"

This short activity helps students analyze a political cartoon about U.S. imperialism in the Philippines. To complete the activity, the teacher will need either a map or a globe to show students the relative distance between the United States and Philippines.

Tags: Expansion and Imperialism, Philippine-American War, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Comparing Slaves and Servants in Colonial New York

In this activity students read a list of laws regulating Africans and African Americans and a servant's indenture contract from colonial New York. Then students find evidence in the primary sources to support a series of statements about the differences between slaves and servants in the period. This activity includes scaffolds and vocabulary…

Tags: Indentured Servants, Reading Supports, Slavery and Abolition, TAH, Work
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Scaffolded Reading of "Drawing of an African Burial Ground Grave In Situ"

This brief activity leads students through analysis of an archaeologist's sketch of the grave of an African buried in colonial New York.

Tags: Reading Supports, Slavery and Abolition, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

The Evolution of the Preamble

This short activity helps students compare two drafts of the Preamble to the United States Constitution. It contains scaffolds for low-level readers.

Tags: Constitution and Government, Reading Supports, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Lessons in Looking: Contraband in Paintings

In this activity students analyze Theodor Kaufmann's 1867 painting On to Liberty. Students practice finding information and making inferences based on the painting by completing a graphic organizer. Then students read a descriptive paragraph of the painting, noting where the author has cited information from the painting and where the author has…

Tags: Eastman Johnson, Emancipation, Lessons in Looking, Reading Supports, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Forty Acres? The Question of Land at the War's End

In this activity students consider different viewpoints on whether former slaves should be given land at the end of the Civil War. Students read one of five primary sources and summarize the author's viewpoint. This activity makes a good introduction to a unit on Reconstruction or to sum up a unit on the Civil War. This activity was designed to…

Tags: Reading Supports, Reconstruction, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

What's In a Phrase? Finding Historical Understandings in an Immigrant Guidebook

In this activity students analyze a Chinese-English phrasebook from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Students match phrases from the textbook to specific historical understandings, write their own historical understanding, and then generate possible phrases for immigrants to the United States today.

Tags: Common Core Reading, Immigration and Migration, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Create a Migrant's Scrapbook from the First Great Migration

In this activity students examine documents from the period of the First Great Migration of African Americans to the North. As they look at the documents, they take notes to build a character of a migrant. Then they create a scrapbook that shows their characters' personal journeys and experiences during the Great Migration. This activity can be…

Tags: Great Migration, TAH, Up South
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

Decoding U.S. Foreign Policy: The Iran-Contra Affair

In this activity students analyze a timeline and official and unofficial documents that reveal the events of the Iran-Contra Affair. This activity also models the types of questions that can help students analyze foreign policy documents from other events. The activity instructions include suggestions for how to differentiate the activity for…

Tags: Cold War, Iran-Contra Affair, Monroe Doctrine, Reading Supports, TAH
Item Type: Teaching Activity
Date: 2010

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