In this activity, students develop Common Core reading skills (eg. citing textual evidence, determining the central ideas, and determining meaning of words and phrases) through a study of the history of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution…

In this activity, students watch the documentary Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl in sections, with documents and exercises designed to support and reinforce the film's key concepts: workers challenging the effects of industrial capitalism, the…

In this activity, students watch a short clip from the ASHP documentary 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation to learn about the impact of railroad expansion on Americans and the nation as a whole. After watching the clip, students complete the…

In this activity, students are guided through a close reading of The Journal of Sean Sullivan: A Transcontinental Railroad Worker, a fictional book for young readers based on historical sources. Students will read a short excerpt from the beginning…

In this activity, students will look at images of various types of technology (eg. TV, video games, subway) and determine which ones are “technological turning points.” To help evaluate whether or not something is a “technological turning…

In this activity, students will look at images from 1919 to explore the nature of the "Red Scare" of the World War I era, and think about it the context of current attitudes toward civil liberties since the September 11th attacks.

This activity introduces students to the term Jim Crow and the concept of legally mandated racial segregation.

In this activity, students watch the ASHP documentary Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War with documents and exercises designed to support and reinforce the documentary's key concepts of Jim Crow, lynching, sharecropping,…

In this game, students are assigned different immigrant identities and advance based on their access to economic opportunity and religious, political, and social liberties at different times in U.S. history.

In this activity, students consider arguments for and against unrestricted immigration during the Ellis Island era. Students analyze political cartoons, letters, newspaper articles, posters, and other sources, noting evidence in the documents to…