Teacher Resources
January webinars: Building a Better History Class.
Thursdays at 6:00 pm CT/7:00 pm ET.
January 15 - The Constitution Isn’t Boring: How to Avoid Teaching It That Way
January 22 - Using Stories & Themes to Make History Come Alive
February 19 - Short, Easy & Powerful Writing Activities to Reinforce Learning
Interested? Fill out this form to register for free.
About me:
I’m an educator—a classroom teacher with 20 years of teaching middle and high school social studies. The work you will find on this page is informed by much reading, a strong academic background in U.S. history, and experience teaching it to real students.
To work with me:
For guidance, questions about anything below, information about my workshops and webinars, or to have me work with teachers in your district, reach out to me at LaurenBrownOnEd@gmail.com, on LinkedIn, or message me through Substack.
Resources:
1. U.S. History Topics & Major Questions/Themes/Issues - described by a recent attendee at a conference as the single most helpful handout she’d ever gotten about teaching history.
2. Once upon a time (2014-2015), I wrote a blog called, U.S. History Ideas for Teachers. It was a chronological march through U.S. history. The posts are rather verbose and some of them are dated, but there is a lot of good stuff there— lesson ideas & activities, readings, etc.. If you find links that are broken, reach out to me here or on LinkedIn and I send you a working link.
3. Guide for how to organize a Constitution Unit - this 2 pager shows how I organize my unit within a U.S. history course thematically, as opposed to branch by branch or article by article. It is designed to get students actually reading and understanding the Constitution itself. For middle schoolers, it takes about a month. For high school juniors, it takes 2 weeks. It could absolutely be used within a government or civics course, too.
4. Guide for organizing a unit on Colonial America - gives you the overview of the themes to emphasize that set up the next unit, the American Revolution, as well as ongoing themes in later units. For more info about why to do this, see this post.
5. Guide for organizing a unit on the New Nation (post Constitution through War of 1812) and a lesson for students that uses George Washington’s Farewell Address to frame it. See high school version here and middle school version here.
6. See more of my writing on MiddleWeb.
If you like what you see, consider sharing it with others:
You can also subscribe to my Substack for free to get regular posts about important issues in education in general, but also posts specifically about topics and issues pertinent to U.S. history teachers:
U.S. History Teachers’ Lounge is part of 36 Mondays, LLC.