Kelley McDermott, History teacher in a Massachusetts Department of Youth Services facility developed this lesson to attract her 8th grade students interest in research and public policy. Historically, students with disabilities are disproportionally caught up in the juvenile justice system. The lesson employs many strategies and tools for accessibility from Emerging America's Accessing Inquiry course. These include a focus vocabulary analysis and Universal Design for Learning plan.

Since arriving in North America in the 15th century, Africans in the United States were forced to navigate the social, economic, and physical limitations placed upon their lives by the institutions of slavery and the racist ideology that justified it. The following primary source set shows several ways that different communities responded to the outlawing of the Atlantic slave trade (and subsequent yearly celebrations of the event) and the Emancipation Proclamation. These two events fundamentally challenged and changed the institutional practices of slavery. 

A large, discipline-specific vocabulary is a distinct challenge for Students with Disabilities and other diverse learners in History and Social Science. Concepts like "citizen" or "rights" are complex, culturally fluid, and difficult to picture. While the vast number of specific or historical technical terms like "longitude," "veto," "cuneiform," and "carpetbagger" require depth of context and background experience. 

This worksheet from Teaching Tolerance presents four quick, basic ideas to support active learning. Building on inspiration from Herbert Kohl, this tip sheet outlines uses of writing, drawing, images, and small groups to engage students. Any of these strategies could be used to assess student understanding. 

Strategies described and illustrated include:

From Social Justice Books: A Teaching for Change Project, this powerful site offers more than 60 curated lists of literature and history books on social justice and multicultural points of view for children, young adults, and educators. Book lists are organized by topic areas–including Changemakers, Disabilities, Immigration (and specific immigrant groups), Organizing, and Voting Rights! 

A "Gallery Walk" prompts students to write responses to an image, and build upon one another's comments anonymously as they write their responses. This strategy offers a silent form of classroom discussion. Click here to watch a video from Facing History where high school students respond to images of monuments and memorials as part of a larger project. (8:08 mins)

*** Before watching the video, you can download the "Viewing Guide" below.

Incorporating visual and performing arts into instruction helps students to relate personally to academic subject matter, broadens the range of modes of expression, and empowers student voice. Philadelphia's University of the Arts has posted many guides to using the arts in instruction with primary sources.

Selected guides - go to the University of the Arts website for more: 

In this example, a Special Education teacher who built a unit around a museum field trip describes a combination of teaching strategies designed to meet the needs of English Learners and students with disabilities, providing examples of student work.

She describes "the opportunity to supplement my curriculum units with visualizations and hands-on experiences to facilitate their learning of weather and climate concepts and to make connections between content areas and Museum exhibits."

Strategies described and illustrated include:

Finding Primary Sources on Disability History

Browse the thorough and easy-to-follow: Using the Library of Congress Online: A Guide for Middle and High School Students. Also very useful for teachers! 

Emerging America's lesson plan template features a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) grid borrowed from Social Studies & Exceptional Learners (see below). It is designed to support teaching of Social Studies. Three columns call for strategies that support the UDL instructional framework (see description in Accessing Inquiry clearinghouse).