Elspeth Leacock

The teaching guides developed for Middle/High schools were created to support 8th grade American history content standards and learning frameworks. They present concise menus of ideas for teachers working with developing critical thinkers. Where the Elementary level teaching guides focus on comprehension, the Middle/High School level teaching guides emphasize critical thinking and drawing connections. The core of each chapter lesson is a Connect-Understand-Check Understanding format, with activities for prereading, comprehension and extension. In addition, each lesson presents activity suggestions for linking disciplines, further research, nonfiction reading, geography skills and differentiated instruction. Groups of chapters are contextualized by Part activities, which include setting context for reading, written assessment prompts, debate suggestions, ethics discussion prompts, projects, and activities. Also, each Part contains a cooperative learning activity developed for A History of US by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Social Organization of Schools. Reproducible assessments, worksheets graphic organizers and rubrics are found at back.