The ability to read historical documents including contemporary explications about societal, economic and political issues provides a direct link to literacy as preparation for citizenship. As in the other disciplines, schools are unique sites for youth across class and ethnic boundaries to learn to read such documents and to develop the skills to engage in such reading for college and career success.

Students become detectives, reading and analyzing documents and artifacts as clues to the life of a nineteenth century woman, Annie Steel. The students then use various materials to create a series of collages.

Informative site that tells about the act that authorized the building of the Hoover Dam. Read the complete text of the Boulder Canyon Project here.

Read a brief overview of the history behind this executive order that integrated the segregated military and then read a copy of the complete original text.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will take a look at the historical vision of the American Dream as put together by our Founding Fathers. They will be asked: How, if at all, has this dream changed? Is this dream your dream? First students will participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing for his or her vision of the American Dream, and then they will write an argument laying out and defending their personal view of what the American Dream should be.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate closely one of the documents that they feel expresses the American Dream.
Students participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing his or her vision of the American Dream.
Students write a paper, taking into consideration the different points of view in the documents read, answering the question “What is the American Dream now?”
Students write their own argument describing and defending their vision of what the American Dream should be.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

What has been the historical vision of the American Dream?
What should the American Dream be? (What should we as individuals and as a nation aspire to?)
How would women, former slaves, and other disenfranchised groups living during the time these documents were written respond to them?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

In this lesson, students will think about what rights the Founders felt that the government should guarantee to its citizens. They'll read and analyze the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

In this lesson, students will go back to the documents they've read, looking through them closely to figure out what the Founders might have said was the “American Dream.”

Connect to primary source documents (facsimiles. transcriptions, translations) that trace the history of Europe.

Discover how historians use newspapers and learn about the development of the modern newspaper. Get answers to many questions about different newspapers.

A guide to dissecting official documents. Learn how to find the author of documents, the primary audience, and other important information.

Read the history behind the first child labor bill in 1916 and view the original document.

Contains all the text and images of the original document. Also includes a summary of the history behind the signing of this treaty.

Offers a summary of this resolution which supported President Johnson's actions in Vietnam and also provides an easy to read version of the complete text.