Sample Lessons/Resources
I must make it clear that I essentially begin the year, the very first day of class by talking about and discussing the multitude of perspectives that can exist with regard to our history. Much of this was discussed in the previous section. The lessons that follow will dig deep into understanding the perspectives of the players involved in historical context and then deal with understanding how we might perceive the situation as students of history. They will follow a similar pattern outside of the materials and information therein.
1. Early Republic
- Students will read the Alien and Sedition Acts as well as excerpts from the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions to complete the series of questions detailed in the Strategies section of this unit under the heading Teaching the Formation of Arguments.
- This will be followed by a lecture/ discussion that will center complications during the Adams administration with special attention paid to the constitutional questions raised by federalist policies that seemingly breached American civil liberties.
- Often I supplement this lecture with a video from the History Channel, an adaptation of the Joseph Ellis book the Founding Brothers.
- At this early point in the year I am beginning to work on writing with my students. After teaching introductory paragraph and thesis writing I assign a prompt and ask that they do just that. To be sure I also ask that they list, with limited descriptions in bullet format, the information they will use in their body paragraphs that is to include analysis of the given documents. In the past I have used this prompt and documents found on the AP Central website: "Although the Alien and Sedition Acts, created in 1798, spurred great dispute, they were created under constitutional guidelines. The acts helped to protect the government of the United States from potential threat." Using the documents and your knowledge of the period, evaluate this statement.
2.Civil War
- Students will read chapters 1-3 in All the Laws but One, again completing the series of objectives listed above.
- This will also be followed by a lecture/ discussion of Lincoln's conduct during the war, the Ex parte Milligan case (1866), and the ramifications of Justice Taney's decision.
- Students will then write a decision for themselves. They will also be asked to either rebuke or in some other way support the overall decision in Milligan. They will be asked to justify their decision by giving valid historical considerations and of course write with regard to the constitution.
3. WWII
- Students will read the Ex parte Quirin (1942), Korematsu v. U.S. (1944), and Dennis v. U.S. (1951) cases and complete the same series of objectives noted before.
- We will then follow with lecture, discussions, and debate during which I will choose selected stories from the Linfield book, Freedom Under Fire, that are particularly inflammable (pun?).
- The culmination of our study here will be to see how concerns over civil liberties manifested themselves on the home front during the Second Red Scare. To this end students will be assigned the 2001 AP data based question (DBQ) found on the AP Central website. It reads: What were the Cold War fears of the American people in the Aftermath of the Second World War? How successfully did the Administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower address these fears? Use your knowledge of the period 1948-1961 and the documents to construct your response.
4. Vietnam
- Students will read Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) and follow the same directions as previously stated.
- This lecture will begin by asking students what sorts of things they would protest, especially with regard to school system rules and regulations. I will also ask for some prospective solutions. I will then ask about the idea of protest outside of school, for instance because of the "War on terrorism." I expect, as has been the pattern, that students will show great emotion on these issues, which is always a plus in the classroom as long as it is healthy. I will then transition to a discussion of the issues presented by Tinker by talking a bit about protest during the Vietnam era. Then we will briefly examine that period in history versus the present. Why was there such great animosity then but not so much now or is there?
The final assignment for this lesson will be a free response sample AP question from the 2005 College Board exam. It reads: Analyze the extent to which two of the following transformed American society in the 1960's and 1970's: The Civil Rights Movement, the antiwar movement, the women's movement.
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