One of a series of curriculum materials in U.S. history designed to teach critical thinking skills systematically, this teacher's guide presents supplementary lesson plans for teaching high school students about the Reconstruction period, industrialism, labor and immigration, and progressivism and populism. The booklet begins with a guide to critical thinking which offers an explanation of types of arguments in history, examples of fallacies, a checklist for evaluating evidence, a method for analyzing value positions, ways of identifying assumptions, and models for analyzing arguments. Other methodologies include: problem worksheets; debate topics and transcriptions; and analyses of interpretations, in which students are presented with rival interpretations of historical events, rewritten at a high school vocabulary level. The teacher's guide includes a rationale for the program, detailed lesson plans keyed to student booklets, answer keys, test questions, a chart of critical thinking skills taught in each lesson, and difficulty-level coding. The document concludes with additional materials (the source materials "envelope"), including an outline of the guide to critical thinking, introductory worksheets, worksheets and handouts for the various lessons in the student booklet, and test questions. (LH)