One part of the site that I have been meaning to comb through is the section on TAH projects. The small link is at the top of the page, right next to the orange "Site at a Glance" button. In general, the section appears to offer featured lesson plans produced through the program and lessons learned.
For those of you who have not had the pleasure of being part of the TAH program, I'll give you some background. TAH is a grant program through the U.S. Department of Education. It was created with the idea that student achievement, especially in U.S. History, could be raised by teaching teachers to prepare meaningful lesson plans, while essentially doing graduate-level work in history (to increase their knowledge base). In the last grant program, here at Fitchburg State, I took classes on America and the Atlantic World, Democracy in America, Immigration, Civil Rights, etc. I loved that the materials I produced in the classes have continued to be very useable as I've taught USI and USII over the past five years.
Anyway, I would urge to explore this part of the website as it contains numerous great ideas for teaching the standards in American history classes. You can also link to various institutions' programs. Here is the Fitchburg State site, which includes many resources on the last set of projects for immigration.
The video above is a ten minute clip from a TAH Declaration of Independence lesson.
I think this is a great program! I would certainly like to participate in this when I am an active practitioner and can think of a number of educators would enjoy being a part of this program. I am glad that some government money is going towards education in a non-MCAS related way.
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