Lesson's mentor text: Washoe Seasons of Life by Karen Wallis, Diane Domiteaux, and Lea Saling

Lesson objectives: Students will analyze primary source documents, pictures, and artifacts using describe, analyze, and interpret method; students will compare and contrast Tahoe City using a sketch from 1865 and a photograph of Tahoe City Today, and show understanding of cause and effect of the comparisons; students will compare and contrast Lake Tahoe from its past to its present.

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Lesson's mentor text: Pedro's Journal: A Journey with Christopher Columbus by Pam Conrad

Lesson objectives: Students will study a historical event of interest to them, using classroom text books and library resouces; students will create a fictional character who would have been alive and present during their researched historical event; students will create a diary entry from the voice of their historical character, trying to combine emotions and historical facts.

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Lesson's mentor text: The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Lawson

Lesson objectives: Civil Rights Warriors is a fun way to incorporate the teaching of research and biographies. Students will research a person connected to the civil rights movement and create a trading card on their researched person. Students will identify through research the qualities of a person from history and their connection to the Civil Rights Movement.

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Lesson's mentor text: George Washington's Socks by Elvira Woodruff

Lesson objectives: Students will study a historical era of interest to them, and they will plan an original story inspired by Elvira Woodruff's story about the Revolutionary War. Each student will compose a story, complete with beginning, middle, and end, where they travel back in time with a companion, witness historically accurate events, then return to their own time with an artifact from the past.

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Lesson's mentor text: "The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" as sung by the Andrews Sisters

Lesson overview: Using a famous World War II propaganda song, students will explore alliteration by changing the lyrics to create a new version of the song. After discussing what alliteration is and why this particular song was used and enjoyed by the people at home to promote patriotic spirit, the students will play with the lyrics to create their own alliterative patriotic songs. The students will then perform or present to the class their version of the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

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Lesson's mentor text: Ben & Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin as Told by His Good Mouse Amos by Robert Lawson

Lesson objectives: Students will research and then plan an organized and creative story where an animal or an object claims credit for something historically credited with someone else. Each story must contain, at least, five historical facts that are sequentially correct. Students will attempt to realistically capture the point-of-view of another entity that has witnessed history.

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Lesson's mentor text: Covered Wagons, Bumpy Trails by Robert Lawson

Lesson objectives: Students will research an immigrant trail, write down descriptive and interesting concepts, and turn it into a concept poem. This lesson can be extended from a poem into a picture book. Moving West is a fun way to integrate research skills and poetry writing.

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Lesson's mentor text: Downloaded video clips from the 1903 silent film "The Great Train Robbery" and soundtrack clips from silent movie music collections.

Lesson overview: A fun way to study the turn of the century! After viewing scenes from the 1903 silent movie The Great Train Robbery (which was directed by one of Thomas Edison's former cameramen) students will listen to silent movie music clips. Students will choose one scene and one or two music clips that best go together based on their ears and eyes' perception. Students will write a short scene, inspired by a film clip, that can be read aloud while the silent movie clips play as background.

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Lesson's mentor text: We the Kids by David Catrow

Lesson objectives: The students will learn the meaning of the words within the Preamble to the Constitution in order to give them a better understanding of its content and of the constitution. The students will write a Found Poem to represent their personal learning from the Preamble.

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Lesson's mentor text: We Dream of a World by various authors

Lesson objectives: Looking for a way for students to find the passion in the Civil Rights Movement and “I Have a Dream” speech? After listening to the audio of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” students will locate words in the speech that connect to the Civil Rights Movement and create a diamond-shaped poem of their own. Through the poem students will express their own thoughts of the meaning of the poem and the movement.

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Lesson's title: Fictional Presidential Journals based on Fact

Lesson's mentor text: My Tour of Europe by Teddy Roosevelt, Age 10, edited by Ellen Jackson

Lesson objectives: Students will choose any president (other than Teddy Roosevelt) and research this president's boyhood history; using the lesson's mentor text as a model, students will imagine that their researched president kept a boyhood journal too, and they will create a fictional but fact-based 15- or 20-day journal about their president's typical daily boyhood life or an extraordinary event (like a trip to Europe) that they discover happened to their president.

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(Complete lesson coming soon!)

Lesson's title: The Presidential Quote Report

Lesson's mentor text: Theodore by Frank Keating

Lesson objectives: Students will choose any president (other than Teddy Roosevelt) by researching famous quotes said by him; students will choose five favorite quotes, and they will research events and facts that might have led their chosen president to speak the words found in the quote dictionary; finally, students will organize a five-part report on their president that exclusively focuses on the historical events that inspired their president to utter those words.

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(Complete lesson coming soon!)