Throughout these lessons, multilingual learners will develop the language necessary for success in the content area of social studies. 

Emerging America 2023 Survey on the Teaching of Disability History

By Rich Cairn, Emerging America

At the end of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, Emerging America widely promoted an online survey of teachers to discover how much they teach disability history. Though the response has been small, the results offer intriguing insights.

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. 

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. 

 "Why Didn't Anyone Teach Me This?" 

Reform to Equal Rights: K-12 Disability History Curriculum is now open!

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:

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.

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.

On this page, we feature resources for teachers of History, Social Studies, and Civics who are designing curriculum in the context of the pandemic, both for students who may be learning from home, and for students navigating a changing environment no matter where teaching and learning happens. 

Updated 07-12-2022

Link to the Reform to Equal Rights curriculum web page.

Opening in February, 2023.