The United States Reading Like a Historian curriculum includes 71 stand-alone lessons organized within 11 units. These lessons span colonial to Cold War America and cover a range of political, social, economic, and cultural topics. Each lesson includes a 1-2 day plan that outlines the lesson’s activities and sets of adapted and modified documents along with guiding questions and graphic organizers to support student analysis, use of evidence, and development of historical claims. When appropriate, lessons also include original copies of documents. We encourage teachers to further adapt these lessons and materials for their particular classrooms.
Learning to read like a historian means asking questions of primary texts.