Category: Lesson Plans

This is a two-part lesson extending over several days that will introduce students to genealogy by having them create a simple “family tree” and map the movements of their ancestors. Since everyone participating in this lesson is currently living in Arkansas, students will be able to determine static and migratory patterns of the Arkansas families represented in their class.

Students will examine various documents from the 1800’s to investigate the changes in writing methods and materials and to better understand the difficulties historians face when using primary sources.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School

Time period: Louisiana Purchase Through Early Statehood 1803-1860

Arkansas Academic Standards are subject to revision every six years by the Arkansas Department of Education.

Students will utilize various sources, including electronic technologies, to gain an understanding of the Memory Project’s topic of civil rights. Students will also participate in class discussions after reading selected interviews from Beyond Central, Toward Acceptance. They will also do research and conduct oral history interviews as directed. Students will also complete essays utilizing information obtained in the oral history interviews.

At the conclusion of the lesson, students will compare and contrast life in the territory to present time.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School

Time period: Louisiana Purchase Through Early Statehood 1803-1860

Arkansas Academic Standards are subject to revision every six years by the Arkansas Department of Education.

The goal of the lesson plan to help students learn to collect and organize data using Chapter 7 of Race Relations in the Natural State or other resources in order to compare Black and White experiences during the Great Depression in Arkansas. Students will also create a timeline that charts successes and setbacks in the struggle for racial equality from the 1930s – 1950s.

The goal of the unit is to help students define Jim Crow Laws in the time period of Arkansas History in the late part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School

Time period: Civil War Through the Gilded Age 1861-1900;

The lesson is designed to help describe the restrictive legislation and other methods used to deny rights to African-Americans during Arkansas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School;

Students will consider the validity of oral and secondary sources through personal experience and a listening/sharing game. They will also discuss how history writers can determine the truth in history.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: K-4 Elementary School

Time period: Modern Era 1968 to Present

Arkansas Academic Standards are subject to revision every six years by the Arkansas Department of Education.

Students will use copies of original letters, telegrams, and magazine articles to analyze what motivated Mr. Rothert to have the missing motto, “In God We Trust,” added to U.S. paper currency. Groups of students will make oral presentations, using these documents as the sources of their findings.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School;

The goal of the lesson plan is to provide students with resources for studying the Civil Rights Movement in Arkansas during the modern era of Arkansas History.

Lesson Plan

Courtesy of CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies

Grade Level: 5-8 Middle School

Time period: World War II Through the Civil Rights Era 1941-1967

Arkansas Academic Standards are subject to revision every six years by the Arkansas Department of Education.