CREATE assists educators in finding civics-related lesson plans and activities in use in their classroom. The Resources for Educators tab on the CREATE website currently offers lessons and activities for Elementary, Middle, and High School teachers. More will be added as the site is developed.

This months featured teacher resources come from Educating for American Democracy.

The Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education to create a strategy that increases exposure to history and civics for all students. Its Roadmap is a framework combines history and civics into strategies that increase students’ literacy and inspire them to become involved in government. The EAD and Roadmap provide over 500 educator resources across the K-12 spectrum. For example, in Mount Vernon’s “Be Washington” interactive challenge, high school students must make strategy and leadership decisions in four key scenarios actually faced by America’s Revolutionary commander-in-chief and first President. Filters including Grade Level, Resource Type, Media, Source, and Theme supplement a Keyword search to make locating suitable materials quick and easy.

Example Teacher Resources include:

Elementary: “Independence Day, the Fourth of July” (lesson plan) “A Sailor’s Life for Me” (interactive game) “Visualizing Democracy with the National Portrait Gallery” (virtual field trip)
Middle School: “Native American Cultures across the U.S.” (lesson plan) “Cast Your Vote” (interactive game) “A Day That Lived in Infamy (Pearl Harbor”) (multimedia)
High School: “What Is ‘Fake News’ and How Does It Affect Our Lives?” (video) “American Experiments: Where Do You Stand on Protest?” (interactive game) “Americans and the Holocaust” (unit plan)