Researching the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case about free speech in the Vietnam era can launch an engaging classroom debate on the First Amendment and the civil rights of students.

A close look at documents related to the case of Mabel Ping-Hua Lee can serve as a springboard into an engaging classroom lesson on the Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact on the voting rights of women in the United States.

The featured naturalization petition belonging to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, who lost her U.S. citizenship when she married an Englishman, can spark an interesting lesson on citizenship rights, women’s suffrage, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Examining Alice Duer Miller’s early twentieth-century satirical poems and social commentary can launch a fascinating classroom lesson on the women’s suffrage movement.

A lesson exploring the Pledge of Allegiance, its history and the addition of the phrase under God, can serve as a jumping off point into major themes of U.S. history and First Amendment freedoms.

A new National Archives partnership has made thousands of additional federal records available online free of charge.

Contemporary social studies instruction should focus on objectives and concepts from many disciplines at all skill levels. In this lesson, fourth and fifth grade students successfully practiced intellectual skills while analyzing primary and secondary sources that documented the life of Belle Case La Follette. The students showed they were capable of a rigorous study of the accomplishments and tribulations of a significant historical figure.

Teaching about the civil rights movement in the elementary grades has, in many schools, focused exclusively on the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Many students are well versed in the content of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and they know well that Rosa did not give up her seat on the bus. While these moments and heroes of the movement are essential in the study of this era in history, the study of more obscure and lesser known people and events is a great way to deepen our students’ understanding of the sacrifices that so many thousands of ordinary people made in the…

The 1775 deposition from a militia commander at Lexington, featured in this article, can be used to spark student inquiry about why the American colonials decided to go to war.