Nigerian born Chinua Achebe is one of the world's most well-known and influential contemporary writers. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is an early narrative about the European colonization of Africa told from the point of view of the colonized people.

The traditional religions of Great Britain's North American colonies had difficulty maintaining their holds over the growing population. This did not, however, result in a wholesale decline in religiosity among Americans.  In fact, the most significant religious development of 18th century America took place along the frontier, in the form of the Great Awakening. This curriculum unit will, through the use of primary documents, introduce students to the First Great Awakening, as well as to the ways in which religious-based arguments were used both in support of and against the American Revolution.

Explore factors that define levels of development.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

When most people think of the Civil Rights Movement in America, they think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. But "the Movement" achieved its greatest results due to the competing strategies and agendas of diverse individuals.

American foreign policy continues to resonate with the issues surrounding the debate over U.S. entry into the League of Nations-collective security versus national sovereignty, idealism versus pragmatism, the responsibilities of powerful nations, the use of force to accomplish idealistic goals, the idea of America. Understanding the debate over the League and the consequences of its ultimate failure provides insight into international affairs in the years since the end of the Great War.

This lesson plan looks at the major ideas in the Declaration of Independence, their origins, the Americans' key grievances against the King and Parliament, their assertion of sovereignty, and the Declaration's process of revision.

A complete listing of EDSITEment's lessons on the causes, the course and the consequences of the American Revolution and Independence

In this lesson students will examine the various visions of three active agents in the creation and management of Great Britain's empire in North America: British colonial leaders and administrators, North American British colonists, and Native Americans.

This activity focuses on the different types of land use found in rural landscapes.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

Student's objective in this project is to ensure the programs are offered where they're most needed. To do so, students create a map by adding and enriching a layer of ZIP Codes with demographic data from ArcGIS Online. They also apply smart mapping and style the layer to show median household income by ZIP Code area. Then, they change the layer style to show median household income and child population, to identify which areas have the most children living in poverty. Students also configure the pop-ups to make the demographic information easier to read. Lastly, they report their findings to top donors and partner organizations by configuring a web app that tells a clear story based on their data.

Fear of factionalism and political parties was deeply rooted in Anglo-American political culture before the American Revolution. Leaders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson hoped their new government, founded on the Constitution, would be motivated instead by a common intent, a unity. But political parties did form in the United States, with their beginnings in Washington's cabinet.

The American civil rights movement incorporated a variety of cultural elements in their pursuit of political and legal equality under law. This lesson will highlight the role of music as a major influence through the use of audio recordings, photographs, and primary documents. Students will participate in their own oral history, examine lyrics, and work with case studies such as the Freedom Rides to gain an appreciation of how music influenced the early 1960s.

In these lessons, students play the role of a GIS specialist for a North Dakota advocacy group. The group wants to alert state and federal officials to this negative effect of the oil boom in order to receive more resources for housing and shelters. Students first download tabular (table-based) data on homelessness. Then, they map the data in ArcMap by joining it to state geography. They publish their map layer to ArcGIS Online and make a set of online maps anyone can access. Finally, students present their maps in a single, easy-to-understand web app.

Students will analyze documents from the War Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands — better known as the Freedmen’s Bureau — that Congress established on March 3, 1865, as the Civil War was coming to an end. Using the scale in Weighing the Evidence, students will evaluate the effectiveness of the Freedmen’s Bureau in assisting formerly enslaved persons. Learning Objectives: Students will be able to identify and draw conclusions about the roles of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands), critically analyze primary sources, formulate opinions about the effectiveness of the Bureau, and back up their opinions verbally or in writing.

Students will explore the spatial patterns of the Human Development Index (HDI) to identify regional patterns and causal factors in the data.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

In this project, students perform a viewshed analysis to determine the visual impact of a wind farm with four large turbines in a study area in England. A viewshed is the area visible from a specific vantage point. Viewshed analysis shows areas where observers can see an object or objects, or conversely, areas that can be seen from those objects. Although a complete wind farm analysis would examine other factors as well, these lessons focus on the visual impact assessment portion of the analysis. Students assess the visual impacts of building the wind farm by generating maps of zones of theoretical visibility under various assumptions.

Through their interpretation of primary documents that reflect Victorian ideals, students can learn the cultural expectations for and limitations placed on Victorian women and then contemplate the writer Charlotte Brontes position in that context. Then, through an examination of the opening chapters of Jane Eyre, students will evaluate Jane's status as an unconventional Victorian heroine.

Even in its first 30 years of existence, the U.S. Constitution had to prove its durability and flexibility in a variety of disputes. More often than not, James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," took part in the discussion.

Curriculum unit on the historical  context of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle and how the book helped reform efforts in Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.