In this activity students analyze Theodor Kaufmann's 1867 painting On to Liberty. Students practice finding information and making inferences based on the painting by completing a graphic organizer. Then students read a descriptive paragraph of the painting, noting where the author has cited information from the painting and where the author has made inferences and drawn conclusions. Then students analyze another painting of a similar theme, Eastman Johnson's A Ride for Liberty. The activity concludes by asking students to synthesize what they have learned about the Civil War based on the painting. The activity may make a good culminating lesson about the Civil War or an introductory lesson on Reconstruction.

This activity teaches students how to break down different elements of a political cartoon. Students examine how different symbols and images can be combined to convey meaning. Then students analyze a 1902 political cartoon about U.S. expansion overseas and the acquisition of new territories in the Philippines in Cuba. This activity includes a Smartboard Notebook file.

In this game, students are assigned different immigrant identities and advance based on their access to economic opportunity and religious, political, and social liberties at different times in U.S. history.

In this activity students read short excerpts of documents that show how the expectations of women, African Americans, and working white men were raised by the rhetoric of liberty during the American Revolution. Students write petitions to the Continental Congress from one of the three group's perspectives, explaining how their group responded to the Revolution and outlining how their group should be treated under the new Constitution. This activity includes multiple learning supports that can help ESL/ELL students, special education students, or low readers.

In this activity, students use facts and make inferences to create narratives about the journey of the slave ship Brookes. Students work in groups to create narratives from one of three different perspectives: Captain, Sailor, or Captive.

In this activity, students read cards about various civil rights protests and events during the 1940s. For each event, students match the issue (voting rights, fair employment, fair housing, or segregation in public places) at stake, identify the key people involved and what region of the country it took place in. After students have completed all the cards, an optional writing task asks students to synthesize the historical content by writing a letter to a relative serving overseas describing the efforts of civil rights activists in the 1940s. There is some assembly of materials required for this activity. This activity has optional Smartboard elements but can be completed without a Smartboard.

In this activity, students look at census records from antebellum Five Points and compare them to depictions of the neighborhood and its residents. Students will evaluate whether observers described Five Points as a neighborhood or slum. The activity includes a Smartboard file, but can be completed without this technology.

This activity features differentiation and scaffolding to help students understand the new social freedoms and new threats to the families of freedmen during Reconstruction. Students work in heterogeneous skill-level groups to analyze several primary sources and prepare to write a paragraph about freedmen's new social freedoms. The activity in the lesson is framed for several consecutive 45-minute lessons, but could be adapted to meet the teacher's needs. The activity features documents from HERB that have been edited for different skill levels; the edited documents are including in the attached PDF "New Liberties and New Threats Worksheet." New York City high school teachers Arthur Everett and Samantha Schoeller created this activity.

In this activity students research roles as either Irish immigrants or African-American residents in the midst of the New York City Draft Riots that took place in July 1863. Students gather evidence from primary sources to develop their characters, based on actual census records, and then enact a role play debating whether to stay in the city or flee (if they are African American) and whether to participate in the riots or protect their black neighbors (if they are Irish immigrants).

In this activity students write original corridos(a type of Mexican folk song) based on the oral histories of braceros. Before writing their own corridos, students learn about the formulas and themes of corridosand analyze a World War II-era corrido. This lesson works best if students have basic background information on the bracero program.

In this activity students perform a role play of immigrant mothers and daughters arguing over who should get to keep the daughter's wages. This activity is used to teach with the film Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl, but can be completed without the film.

In this activity students read poems written by Chinese immigrants to understand the hopes of and challenges faced by Chinese immigrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Then students write an original poem about the Chinese immigrant experience in the U.S. This activity uses materials in both English and Spanish and includes a word bank to help ESL/ELL students create their poems.

In this activity, students compare World War II propaganda posters from the United States, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. Then students choose one of several creative or analytical writing assignments to demonstrate what they've learned.

In this activity students learn about literacy tests and other barriers that kept black Southerners from being able to vote. Students also take a 1960s literacy test from Alabama.

In this activity, students are guided through a close reading of The Journal of Sean Sullivan: A Transcontinental Railroad Worker, a fictional book for young readers based on historical sources. Students will read a short excerpt from the beginning of the book and determine the meaning of key words. Working in groups, students will then read excerpts related to one of the following themes: working conditions of railroad builders; tension between immigrant groups; corruption of the railroad companies; conflict with Great Plains Indian tribes; and boomtowns. They will also complete an individual writing task on their theme. Finally, students will consider the positive and negative effects of the railroad on the country as a whole, as well as on specific groups of Americans.

In this activity students learn about the religious, class, and ethnic tensions between reformers and residents in the working-class Irish immigrant neighborhood of Five Points. Students research roles of a Protestant reformer and two Irish women debating whether the reformer should send Irish children to live with upper-class parents. This activity accompanies the film Five Points: New York's Irish Working Class in the 1850s, but parts of it can be completed without the film.

This activity compares a runaway slave ad and an abolitionist poster to explore the causes and effects of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. The law changed how many northerners viewed slavery and intensified conflicts that brought the nation closer to Civil War.

This brief activity leads students through analysis of an archaeologist's sketch of the grave of an African buried in colonial New York.

In this activity students compare an excerpt of a WPA interview with an ex-slave with a more famous statement by Frederick Douglass to arrive at their own interpretations of slave resistance. This lesson is designed to work with the film Doing As They Can, but parts of it can be completed without the film.

In this activity, students analyze documents to arrange events on a timeline of women's suffrage. The timeline and documents will help students understand the intersection of social movements and constitutional change. This activity can be modified by reducing the number of documents. An optional Smartboard Notebook file is included to facilitate the activity.