In this Reading Like a Historian lesson, Melody Skidmore and Zelicia Hughes guide fifth grade students to explore the issue of open housing by looking at the experiences of the Wades, and African American family that lived in a formerly all-white neighborhood in Louisville in 1955.

In this Reading Like a Historian lesson by Lisa Cline, Stephanie Hurst, and Bobbie Mason, intermediate students will explore images and oral histories from Kentucky as well as Little Rock that shed light on what it was like to be the first to integrate a white school. 

In this Reading Like a HIstorian lesson created for high school students by James Clapp, Bernard Kouns, and Chip Manley, students listen to the voices of those who bravely integrated schools, first in Little Rock in 1957, and in the mid-60s in other southern cities.  Students then look for similarities and difference between those accounts to see how the process of integration changed in the 10-15 years after Brown.

This Reading Like a Historian lesson by Hope Brown and Ashley Mineer is intended for the high school level.  It features two images and two documents where students answer the question, "How are the effects of segregation seen in public accommodations, especially restaurants."

Students will be grouped according to teacher’s directions for this activity.Students will review primary sources about Abraham Lincoln’s different views on slavery during his lifetime. These primary sources will include letters, speeches, and quotations. Students will complete within their group a graphic organizer after they have analyzed the primary sources. They will write a 1-2 sentence summary about each primary source.

This lesson teaches high school US HISTORY content of analyzing primary and secondary source documents and reviews the Civil War focusing on Kentucky's role as a border state.  It also allows student to see how Kentuckians changed their opinion of the war throughout and that media is able to shape opinion through what it reports.

Students will be introduced to the concept of slavery & the Underground Railroad through a variety of resources including historical fiction, photographs, narratives, music and websites. Instruction combines teacher directed activities, small group readings as well as individual tasks. Many of the resources utilized have a Kentucky connection which i feel will offer a more “personal” connection with my students. I also targeted several stories/readings in which the characters were in the same age range as my 4/5th grade students, again enriching a personal student connection. Students will fist gain an understanding of what it meant to be a slave. Later, they will expand their understanding to include the risks/rewards involved with escaping slavery. Several aspects of the Underground Railroad will be visited including the origin, dangers and secrets associated with it. Additional literacy skills such as predicting, vocabulary enrichment and writing are addressed and incorporated throughout the lesson. This lesson is intended as an introduction into slavery and the Underground Railroad. It only opens the doorway into possibilities of a larger unit or additional lessons on the subject.

After touring several homes from the Civil War period I began to wonder how difficult life must have been for the women left at home. These women were left to care not only for the home, but many had farms and crops to tend as well.  As I started my research I also discovered that many other hardships were prevalent.  Using this lesson I hope to help students understand not only the difficulties of life in general during this time period, but how much harder it became because of the war.    

This lesson is designed to help students begin to analyze what historians can learn from ordinary Americans whose Civil War letters were preserved. Not only will they look at these letters for geographical information and historical events but they will also analyze them for insight into daily lives and from a human perspective. Not only will students read letters, but they will create their own letters and then end the lesson by creating quilt pieces based on the book. The Civil War Love Letters Quilt to correspond with those quilt pieces.

In this lesson students will learn that females' perspectives of slavery differed greatly as did the life of female slaves.

Kentucky’s diversity during the Antebellum period and their stance in the Civil War is one that continues to be an extremely controversial issue.  This lesson will study the impact of historical perspectives through the study of primary sources and children’s literature. Students will have opportunities to participate in activities that will engage them in the use of historical perspective as they study the Antebellum period, Kentucky’s position in the Civil War, and Kentuckians perspectives and positions on assisting runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.

In this unit the students will gain perspective about different groups and their manner in identifying and confronting the issue of the Civil War.  Students will view video clips from the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, listen to trade books, and view photos.  Students will then identify how specified characters reacted to slavery.  Students will then compare/contrast how members of the different groups reacted.  Students will also create drawings/slides to illustrate compare/contrast for each groups.  These drawings/slides will be compiled into books or digital stories, depending on student choice. 

This lesson focuses on an obscure Union colonel from Ohio named James Garfield who rose to national attention as a result of his actions in Eastern Kentucky, and in particular, at the Battle of Middle Creek and shortly thereafter. Garfield would use this national attention to eventually end up in the White House.

After visiting the Battle of Richmond museum this summer, I became very interested in the battle, mostly because it took place in my home county. Then we visited the Mt. Zion Church and learned of its role in the battle. I was hooked! I knew my students had to learn of this story and I hope it will provide not only historical knowledge but that they will also be able to make an extension into their personal lives. After discussing the causes of the war I want to discuss the Battle of Richmond, and then lead into the Mt. Zion Church serving as a hospital for both the North and South. I hope to extend this lesson to making applications into our personal lives, by focusing on what strengths of character, great levels of empathy and patience it took to work, struggle, and heal side by side with your enemy. People who later down the road may possibly kill you.