primary source material

Six lessons for which instructional support and teaching steps are provided in the unit curriculum guide. Each lessons unfolds in four stages: Inquiry, Observation, Analysis, Synthesis. In this unit students explore for themselves the nature of national identity and its links to the past. They began by considering the meaning of national identity and how primary sources may reveal the role of past events in shaping it. In subsequent lessons students investigate the impact of significant episodes in United States history - the years from colonization to independence, the writing and adoption of the Constitution, the period of early national growth, and the Civil War. In the final project students conduct oral history interviews and create a time line as means of discerning for themselves ways that shared memories confer an American identity on a diverse citizenry and how that identity is continually refined by contemporary events.

Six lessons for which instructional support and teaching steps are provided in the unit curriculum guide. Each lessons unfolds in four stages: Inquiry, Observation, Analysis, Synthesis. In this unit students examine aspects of power in United States history. They begin by considering citizenz' rights and their rights as students. They go on to study how power is gained and used in the context of four historic episodes: the woman suffrage movement, the African American struggle for equality in the first 50 years after emancipation, government's expanding role during the Great Depression, and shifting views of the United States' role in world affairs from 1914 to 1941. In the unit's final project, students explore how some Americans are using their power to work for the common good, and they discover ways in which they, too, might participate.

Six lessons for which instructional support and teaching steps are provided in the unit curriculum guide. Each lessons unfolds in four stages: Inquiry, Observation, Analysis, Synthesis. In this unit students examine connections between people and their environment. They begin surveying their own environment and considering their relationship with it. They go on to study relationships between Americans and environment in the context of four different historic episodes in the period of rapid growth and development between the Civil War and World War I.