This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. This unit consists of lessons focused on selected topics in medieval history that define and describe the roles of women. The lessons examine the roles of women in the Early Middle Ages with particular emphasis on…

This Holocaust curriculum project is designed for a 10th grade world cultures class that meets for 80 minutes per day during one semester. The students use selected primary sources including poems, diary excerpts, and a short novel written by victims and survivors of the Holocaust. They also examine profiles about the rescuers. Additional…

This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. The events of 1945 are regarded widely as a turning point in 20th century history, a point when the United States unequivocally took its place as a world power, at a time when Americans had a strong but…

This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. By studying primary sources of a crucial turning point in history, students become aware that choices had to be made by real human beings, that those decisions were the result of specific factors, and that they set…

This tenth grade lesson plan asks student teams to research and analyze the history, the challenges, and the future of contemporary nations and share their discoveries in a poster presentation at a technology pavilion. The lesson plan states that each team, as a participating nation, is required to include three themes in their countries' pavilion…

This document is a collection of lessons for teaching a unit on ancient Chinese history. The unit focuses on a specific dramatic moment in history from which students can explore the deeper meanings of selected landmark events and their wider context in the great historical narrative. Continuing narrative provides the contest in which the dramatic…

This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. The purpose of this unit is to study the development and significance of the universities of the Middle Ages and their ties to the university system of the 20th century. The university structure of higher education…

This unit begins by examining the problem of rural poverty in China in the 1940s. A variety of solutions attempted by the Chinese government between the mid 1940s and the present all aimed at the improvement of peasant living standards in the countryside. Because 80 percent of China's people are peasants, the Chinese Communist party saw the…

This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. By studying a crucial turning-point in history, students become aware that choices had to be made by real human beings, that those decisions were the result of specific factors, and that they set in motion a series…

The purpose of this unit is to explore the ideas and ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment thinkers called the Philosophes, and to understand how they continue to influence basic notions about the nature of man and his world. The unit introduces key members of the Philosophes through short excerpts from their works. The selections illustrate…

This unit focuses on a dramatic moment in the Renaissance from about 1420 when Filippo Brunelleschi single handedly created, defined, and engineered a new architecture by building the great dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. The dome became the symbol of Florence's grandeur during the Renaissance, and a model for great…

This unit is one of a series that presents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. The purpose of this unit is for the student to explore the advances in scientific knowledge made in Europe in the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. These advances, beginning with Copernicus, radically…

Students gain from a sense of the living history that surrounds Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Through studying primary source materials from American Memory and other online sources, students of all backgrounds may better grasp how historical events and human forces have shaped relationships between black and white and…

The material in this unit is designed to introduce students to the origin and role of ideas in history, especially their role in the lives of ordinary people, in the rapidly industrializing United States of the 19th century. These lessons concern Americans in the great age of industrialization, from 1850 to 1900. Unit objectives include: (1)…

This unit is one of a series that presents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. By studying a crucial turning-point in history, students become aware that choices had to be made by real human beings, that those decisions were the result of specific factors, and that they set in motion a series…