Introduction - Secondary Lesson Plans

The SHAFR Lesson Plan Project grew out of the organization’s commitment to improve the quality of teaching about how the United States has interacted with the world from 1776 until today. The lessons are designed to provide middle and high school teachers a variety of resources and primary sources that can be adapted for the needs of their individual classes.

If you have comments on any of these lessons, or would like to create new ones or adapt your current lesson plans to share with your colleagues, please contact Prof. John Tully at [email protected].

Also, we realize that links often change unexpectedly. That can be very frustrating. If you find a broken link, please do let us know so we can find the new link or change the lesson plan. Thanks!! ([email protected])

Before you visit the individual lessons, we invite you to visit these sites. They represent some of the best resources on the new pedagogies of teaching history and excellent collections of primary sources on the history of American Foreign Relations.

Historical Thinking Matters – www.historicalthinkingmatters.org

HTM has an excellent short video on what historical thinking is and why it is important. It is a handy reference for teachers and can be shown to students as well. The site also has lesson plans and teaching materials designed to foster students’ historical thinking skills.

Stanford History Education Group – sheg.stanford.edu

Some of the best new work on effective and innovative ways to teach history is coming out of the Stanford History Education Group. Their goal is to provide teachers with “high-quality resources to enrich students’ intellectual experience in the history classroom.”

Beyond the Bubble – beyondthebubble.stanford.edu

The Stanford History Education Group’s thought-provoking site on history assessments. The site has a series of “History Assessments of Thinking” that “gauge historical thinking in easy-to-use, classroom-friendly ways.” It is an excellent site.

TeachingHistory.org - http://teachinghistory.org

“Teachinghistory.org is designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) has created Teachinghistory.org with the goal of making history content, teaching strategies, resources, and research accessible.”

Teaching History with Technology - http://thwt.org

"A resource created to help K-12 history and social studies teachers incorporate technology effectively into their courses."

Center for History and New Media - http://chnm.gmu.edu/teaching-and-learning

 

Document Collections

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) - http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/FRUS

The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. This digital version is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.

SHAFR Classroom Document Collection

Digital Public Library of America http://dp.la

Extensive Collection from Mt. Holyoke https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/feros-pg.htm

Presidential Papers - http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index_docs.php

From "Teaching American History" - http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/

Library of Congress - http://www.loc.gov/topics/americanhistory.php

Historical Newspapers - http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/

Images - http://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/wwwvisualhistory.php