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: Colonial Daily Life (3rd Grade)
Explore primary sources to learn about daily life in Colonial Massachusetts.
Students will practice with posing questions about primary source documents and then analyzing the resources to learn more about life in Colonial Massachusetts. Students will summarize their learning in the final lesson.
What was everyday life like for people who lived near the ocean in Massachusetts 250 years ago?
What can a newspaper tell us about the lives of men, women, and children in 1767 Massachusetts?
Focus skills include:
Language-aware lesson example: Is it ever okay to break a law? (High School)
Explore primary sources connected to the Civil Rights movement.
The English Learner Collaborations project of the Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies commissioned the development of lessons to illustrate applying English Language Development (ELD) teacher resources to History and Social Studies content.
By the end of the sequence of lessons linked below, students should be able to explain the principles of non-violent civil disobedience, and will be able to provide examples of non-violent civil disobedience.
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.
Tutankhamun, Egyptian Boy-King: Disability, Art, & Respect
Tutan(not-so)khamun
King Tutankhamun was a pharaoh who became a leader at age 9. His tomb is a rich source of art and information about the time in which he lived. He was also a leader with a physical disability.
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.