LESSON PLANS

Introduce your students to History Detectives using the website features and lesson plans. These lessons will help you engage your middle and high school students in rich history investigations and will allow you to support your curriculum and the national history standards in unique ways.

= Lesson includes video

Basic Detective Skills

Introduce your students to the skills and techniques used in historical investigations. A total of ten lessons, these units can be used as they are presented, as stand-alone lessons, as needed in other lesson plans, or combined with an episode viewing to create a new lesson.

Visiting a Historical Site

These three lessons provide activities around visiting a historical site. The first of these three lessons will likely take two or more class periods. In this lesson, students will research the historical site (1 or more class periods) and then groups of students will present their findings (1 class period).

The second lesson will be completed during the trip to the historical site. During this trip, students will complete a scavenger hunt based upon the research they did in the previous lesson.

The final lesson will involve one class period after the visit. Here students will create a historical poem based upon their research before the visit to the historical site, as well as their findings during their fieldwork at the site. More time may be required if you have your students recite their poems in front of the class.

Lesson 1: Before We Travel, We Research

Lesson 2: At the Site, A Scavenger Hunt

Lesson 3: Writing a Historical Poem

Searching for Attic Artifacts

These seven lessons involve students researching their own family histories. Each involves a different research step, from interviewing family members to searching for family artifacts to testing those artifacts to discover their origin and authenticity. Before you begin, you may want to show students an example of a full investigation. You can have them watch Ernie Pyle's Typewriter (15:00) , a story from Season Five which features several examples of historical research skills.

Each of these seven lessons will take one full class period, with the exception of the final lesson, which may take more or less time, depending upon the experiments students devise to test their artifacts. Additionally, if you wish to have students report their findings to the class, this will take additional time based upon class size.

Lesson 4: Interviewing a Parent

Lesson 5: Searching the Attic

Lesson 6: Observation

Lesson 7: Classification

Lesson 8: Predicting/Making a Hypothesis

Lesson 9: Conceptualizing an Experiment

Lesson 10: Testing the Hypothesis

Story Specific Lessons

Cardboard History

Based on the 2005 investigation Jim Thorpe Ticket. From baseball cards to Barbie dolls, a collector finds joy in investigating and treasure hunting.

Home Sweet Home

Based on the 2003 episode “Oregon” which included the investigations Mark Twain Watch, Philip Sheridan House and Revolutionary War Poems. Use architecture as inspiration and means to learn about one's own town history.

Inventions

Based on the 2005 investigation Car Tape Deck. Explore the future drawn from the past. Design, invent, demonstrate, and share!

Primary Sources

Based on the 2005 investigation Cherokee Bible. Determine credibility, ascertain originality, verify reliability, identify surrounding history, and utilize in your investigative research.

USS Indianapolis

Based on the 2005 investigation USS Indianapolis. Have your students study the Pacific Theatre of World War II, and then decide what questions to ask and what resources to use. See how they match up against the History Detectives in the case of USS Indianapolis.

General Lessons

Field Trip

This lesson an be used to investigate any topic. Follow this guide and encourage students to become an investigator, historian, archaeologist, architect, geographer, or environmentalist.

Written In Stone

Visit your local cemetery to look, learn, and reveal the past!

In Your Classroom

If you have limited access to computers for your students, consider the following options:

• If there are several computers available, have your students work in groups. Emphasize the importance of the investigators working as a team.
• If there are only one or two computers available, have your students work in groups. Design an investigation lesson with several stations. One or two of the stations would be at a computer. The groups must visit each station in order to complete the investigation.
• If you have access to a computer and projection device, visit and use the website as a class.
• You may not have computers in your classroom, but may have to go to a computer lab or computer room to use computers. You can follow up in the classroom with worksheets, transparencies, notebooks and posters.

Go to PBS Teachers for more than 3000+ lesson plans and activities.