Emerging America has two teacher-assembled sets of primary sources that offer rich detail and related classroom activities to engage student inquiry about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7 and the events that followed.

A new lesson, appropriate for 8th grade civics and adaptable for other grades, asks: What impact did the Magna Carta have on the U.S. Constitution and the shaping of the 14th Amendment? With a particular emphasis placed on the due process of law, students analyze and organize primary source documents ranging from a British Court of Common Pleas from 1610 to Chief Justice Warren’s notes on Miranda v. Arizona in 1966.

“...establish justice…” “...promote the general welfare….” “...secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”   Just in time for election day, here is a simple lesson on the founding goals for the government of the United States, adaptable for all grade levels.

This is a great simple civics lesson with three distinctive case studies: marchers with disabilities who took over federal buildings in a historic sit-in in 1977 (the 504 protests), young American volunteers in the Spanish Civil war in 1936, and a 12-year-old mill worker who was inspired to lead a walk-out in 1898.

Who gets accepted as a citizen or as an immigrant?  Who is considered a desirable immigrant? This lesson plan examines the arrival of newcomers and the history of the entry process. Students use primary source images and texts to investigate the answer to this question for Ellis Island in the 1900s and then present evidence with supported claims.

This lesson guides students in exploring the Great Depression of 1920-1940 with a focus on the Dust Bowl, Migrant Workers, and the status of people with disabilities during this time period. The lesson is conceived as a research project in preparation for reading John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men”, and could also be an interdisciplinary unit linking American History, English Literature, and Disability History. It can be co-taught by the subject teacher and the Special Education Teacher.

Care for veterans is a topic not only relevant to the understanding of the aftermath of war, and to the understanding of the role of government, but is a critical topic within the longer arc of disability history. In this lesson, students gather information through a variety of primary sources on the experiences of veterans from the War of Independence through today, and ask the question, ‘How has U.S.

This lesson invites students to wonder about what life was like as a disabled WWI veteran. The lesson provides materials and instructions for guiding students in analysis of primary source materials that include a song about shell shock, a cartoon contrasting wounded veterans with rich profiteers, Red Cross posters, and a photograph highlighting life-changing war injuries.

Nellie Bly’s account of her experience as an inmate at an asylum as an undercover journalist offers a gripping entry point into the history of mental health care reform and a discussion of how people in need of care should be treated. In this lesson, students explore several primary sources addressing the treatment of people with mental illness and disability at New York City’s Blackwell Island in the mid to late 1800s.

Carolyn Ritter, author of this newly available lesson on Immigration versus Nativism, writes: “The topic of immigration is just as controversial today as it was at the turn of the twentieth century.