Model Lessons on Disability History

New Mini-Units Will Integrate Disability History across K-12 Curriculum - read 11-03-2021 announcement 

MODEL LESSONS

The Teaching Resources section on this site offer a variety of inquiry-based, teacher-designed lessons that demonstrate strategies to enliven historical content through engaging learning activities–and incorporating a rich mix of primary sources. The Inquiry Strategies page on this site offers in-depth explanation of how to incorporate inquiry into teaching diverse learners. In particular, the site features the following lesson plans and primary source sets that align Disability History with common U.S. History topics.

State Standards on Disability History - List of standards that directly address Disability History in the 2018 Massachusetts history standards, with links to lessons that address them. UPDATED 11-03-2021.  

• Emerging America - Accessible lesson plans on Disability History:
  • What is Our Value? A look at undervalued people (2) 
  • In or Out: Race and Disability as Legal Barriers to Immigration (3-5) 
  • How disability rights activists created change (5, 8) 
  • Deformity and Disability in Ancient Greece (6-8) 
  • Tutankhamun, Egyptian Boy-King: Disability, Art, & Respect (6-8) 
  • Ancient Rome's Veterans with Disabilities: Roman Accounts and U.S. Veteran Comparisons (6-8, 9-12) 
  • Injuries and Disability in 19th Century Industry (6-8) 
  • Civil War Veterans & Disability in American History (6-8, 9-12) 
  • Citizenship and Community Involvement (6-8, 9-12) 
  • Civil Rights & Disability: 1990 ADA, IDEA, & the Juvenile Justice System Today (6-8, 9-12) 
  • Disability, Protest, and the 504 (8) 
  • The Emergence of Special Education (9-12) 
  • Reforming American Society with Dix and Mann (9-12) 
  • Nellie Bly 1887: Exposing Treatment of Those with Mental Illness (9-12) 
  • World War I and Disability (9-12) 
  • The Great Depression, Dust Bowl, Disability: Background for "Of Mice and Men" (9-12) 
  • Social Security: What is the Federal Responsibility to Care for Vulnerable People? (9-12) 
  • Who Should Care for America's Veterans? (9-12) 

• Emerging America - Primary source sets on Disability History: 
  • Disability History (3-5, 6-8, 9-12) 
  • Eugenics: Preoccupation with Genetic Fitness and Threats of Difference & Disability (6-8, 9-12)
  • Polio and Parallels to the Covid-19 Pandemic (6-8, 9-12)  

Find more accessible lessons and teaching resources using search tool for the Emerging America library of Teaching Resources.