Time Out – Spotlight Offensive Language in Primary Sources
Every unit of the Reform to Equal Rights: K-12 Disability History Curriculum includes an introduction to the topic of disability, including strategies to address disrespectful vocabulary.
Language-aware lesson example: Does the First Amendment say you can? (8th Grade)
Explore the First Amendment free speech rights
of students...through analysis of Supreme Court decisions.
Students will practice summarizing interpretations of Freedoms of Speech under
the First Amendment.
How disability activists created change
This lesson has a sharable ready-made album of primary sources with an introduction essay by the author!
Disability, Protest, and the 504
“I Can’t Even Get To The Back of the Bus” – Disability, 504 and the Power of Protest
This lesson investigates why and how people take action to make a difference. Building from an inquiry-based RAN chart, the lesson explores the context of the 1977 protests calling on the Federal Government to actually implement 504 access legislation. Featuring a variety of primary sources, including testimony of activist Ed Roberts.
What is our value? A look at undervalued people
What is our value? The principle that people are paid for their work does not always work as it should; many people who have been historically undervalued have contributed to American society, including many people of color, people with a disability, women, and children. Students view images and text of people whose lives may not have been adequately valued by their contemporaries. Students examine those documents, do further research, and come to their own conclusions about how those individuals should have been and should be valued, and possibly assisted.
Putting Primary Sources in Order - Text Set and Flow Map
Organizing a rich text set of primary sources requires that students analyze and make sense of several sources on a topic. In this case, they seek to answer a focused guiding question. Students sort through about a dozen images, letters, forms, and political cartoon. In practice, a teacher could offer fewer sources, though it is a valuable sometimes to require students to choose among sources. The primary sources are also give context by a secondary source narrative from the Veterans Administration.
Zoom-In Visual Inquiry Activity
Wendy Harris, a teacher at Metro Deaf School in St.
Immigrant Stories: Why we came, and what we brought with us
In this lesson on the experiences and contributions of immigrants to the United States, elementary students explore the reasons why people have made life changes in moving to a new country, both earlier in history and recently, using primary sources and interviewing accessible adults.
Disability History Primary Source Set
Disability History: From Almshouses to Civil Rights
UPDATED IN 2020. The following primary source set, created using materials from the Library of Congress, contains an array of sources focused on Disability History in the United States. Disability has been interwoven into America’s history since the country’s inception through letters, images, newspapers, diaries and other primary sources. The set provides a comprehensive look into a wide range of Library of Congress resources.
Polio Primary Source Set
Closed movie theaters, church services, and summer camps – special hospital wards with ventilators called ‘iron lungs’ for polio patients with the most severe cases – parallels between polio and coronavirus epidemics are numerous. What lessons can we learn from history?