Teacher Lesson Plans

Students will design a campaign to promote the Marshall Plan. This ad campaign can be done in the form of posters, speeches, websites, or other multi-media outlets.

This lesson plan requires the classroom to be divided into proponents and opponents to the Marshall Plan.

Spending time with Martha Washington to learn about the colonial era.

The lesson will be a traditional lecture based lesson using primary source documents from President Truman and Joseph McCarthy. I will also incorporate a documentary movie on the HUAC trials and McCarthy. My main focus will be on the Red Scare.

Through a brief lecture, document analysis, and creation of museum exhibit on McCarthyism students will evaluate the political, social and cultural impact of McCarthyism in America.

Vacation planning as a fourth-grade introduction to a host of ideas including, map reading, state history, recreation in Missouri, scarcity, and opportunity cost

Students will conduct a local history project for WWI. They will create a presentation about Missouri’s role in WWI.

Students will read and assess letters of former President Harry Truman to understand what was transpiring in his life during the time he spent in the army during World War One.

Using primary sources from the Harry Truman Library, the students will develop an understanding of some of the requests made of a United States Senator and how the senator and his staff handle these requests.

Students will identify several underlying themes of war inspired music and analyze the effect the author is trying to create.

Students will research through the use of primary source documents the lives of different segments of societies in WWI, and create a fictional narrative based on this study, to illustrate their understanding of the material.

Students will discover and turn in examples of bias in the news media.

Journals/diaries written by the students from the viewpoint of Japanese Americans sent to the internment camps during WWII that include multimedia and social media aspects. This is an individual activity that is researched based with technology aspects that uses primary and secondary resources.

For students to investigate the expansion of executive powers by President Richard Nixon and the debate about the scope of executive power.

This is a technology based, two-day project that requires a direct instructional approach with a lecture and about a day and a half of using artifacts and primary sources to look at Missouri's involvement in the Civil War.

Students will use a historical document (NSC-68) and compare it with the Patriot Act to find similarities and differences. The purpose is to help students understand that in times of crisis, the government often infringes on civil liberties.

This lesson will fit into my post war unit right before we get into the Cold War. The purpose of teaching about Nuremberg is two fold, first to talk about how the World was changing in relationship to dealing with this type of crime...

This lesson was designed to provide the students who learn in the visual mode a means to successfully interpret and experience the Nuremberg Trials on a unique nonstandard plane and to express their thoughts through writing.

This activity asks the essential question “What leadership qualities do modern Vice Presidents need to fulfill their many roles?”  The focus is on Vice President George H.W. Bush during the assassination attempt of President Ronald Reagan. 

Students will read chapter five from Fredrick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday, "The revolution of Manners & Morals" as a guide to the seismic shifts in American popular culture during the 1920s.

At the end of the lesson on the New Deal, the students will be assigned one of the following individuals (Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Huey P. Long, and Father Charles Coughlin) to research views on the New Deal.

Students will examine primary sources, both written and visual aids, in class to evaluate and create an opinion on General Thomas Ewing's Order No. 11 and determine the overall purpose of the order and create an argument as to whether or not it was justified, fair, and successful.

The students will receive a copy of Margaret Hays’ letter Number 35, and will read, interpret and answer questions.  The class will discuss individual interpretations.

This lesson will allow students to participate in history within the context of an ordinary person (Margaret Hays) and then create history with the student becoming the primary source for events they are witnessing. Hopefully, the lesson will help build a connection to the past and encourage more participation in civic policy and interest in current events.

Students will examine primary and secondary source material to draw connections while working individually, cooperatively with a partner, and during whole-group discussion.

During the lesson students will learn how to analyze primary sources, search for and find bias, decide which sources are most reliable, and create a blog post with their findings. This lesson is about the Border War in Kansas and Missouri.

Using both primary and secondary sources, students will research and analyze the candidates and issues of the 1976, 1980, and 1984 campaigns.

This lesson provides information to students about the White House, and the residents of the White House. Second grade students can identify with animals and pets and it makes the topic of learning about the White House a more personal connection.

Reflection and analysis of symbols and their use in political cartoons

This classroom activity has the purpose of explaining to students the geographic difficulty of finding a two-state solution in the Middle East that would have the support of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

This will be a paired learning activity. The students will work in pairs analyzing party platforms from 1948 and 2004 or 2008.

The goal of this lesson is for students to take a look into past presidential propaganda and determine its similarities and differences.

To illustrate the two differing/opposite points of view on the expansion of slavery into the territory of Kansas and later the issue of slavery in the entire country.

Students will individually aim to use socio-economic and political data to determine and predict how each swing state will vote in the upcoming 2016 Presidential Election.

What is the difference between what Truman said and what he did on the subject of race

Students will listen to a speech by President Truman and will fill out a work sheet based on the speech that they heard.

After a review of African American military history, students will analyze three primary documents associated with President Truman's decision to desegregate the military.

Students use document and artifacts, including Truman's desk, to analyze Harry S. Truman

Students will debate the achievements of the Presidents.

The Truman administration was no stranger to the sneers and jeers of political cartoonists. Facing such controversial issues as the desegregation of the armed forces, dropping of the atomic bomb, the cold war, the fair deal, the Republican takeover of Congress, and the 1948 presidential campaign, political and editorial cartoons were commonplace. President Truman, no matter how scathing, always professed a fondness for the cartoons and became an avid collector of them in his post-presidential years.

Students will examine documents from opposite sides from advisors close to Truman on the issue of the Recognition of Israel.

I want to find a way for students to objectively analyze Presidential decisions for war in a way that will allow them to move away from political arguments and personal leanings.

After studying articles and timelines on the Iran Hostage Crisis in groups, students will participate in a class discussion of the circumstances and causes of the crisis. Groups will study primary documents with the goal of providing a recommendation.

This lesson will allow students to gain insights into the political customs and traditions associated with presidential elections.

Students in Advanced Placement US History will study the major elections and events of each American presidency.

This will be a cooperative learning assignment, where students will work in small groups between five to seven. Students will be broken into four groups and will be assigned a Former United States President, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. Students will be assigned one of the following Presidents to research through their Presidential Libraries. Students will only be able to use primary sources for this assignment.

Student will rank the Presidential powers from most important to least important.

Students will use online resources from presidential libraries, Library of Congress, other websites that have presidential executive orders and other policies. Students will understand how a president (or multiple presidents) used presidential power of speech and words to enact legislation

This lesson would be in a Junior level U.S. Government course, once they have a complete idea of the Articles of the Constitution and have had a chance to explore Article 1 and Legislative Branch. It will require the student to apply their growing base of knowledge on the Power/Role of the President to their knowledge of life in American(Present, Past and Future).

As part of a unit on the United States Government, students will examine the powers of the President. They will examine Executive Order 9981 and Executive Order 8802 in relation to implicit powers and civil rights.