K-12 Lesson Plans

The Freedmen’s Bureau in Brazoria County, 1865-1867

Grade Level: 7th-11th | 1-3 60-minute class period(s)

Lesson Overview This lesson plan contains three activities. The activities are designed to build on one another, but teachers may opt to do a single activity or any combination of activities depending on how much time is allocated to teach Reconstruction. Each activity asks students to start by reading the short narrative about a complaint five formerly enslaved men filed

The Lives of the Enslaved in Texas

Grade Level: 5th-8th | 1 60-minute class period

Lesson Overview This lesson plan centers on the different lived experiences of enslaved people across Texas. This one-day activity asks students to read short narratives, collect and compare evidence, generate themes that connect enslaved people’s experiences based on their evidence, and then write a short paragraph using that evidence.

Thinking Like a Historian: Slavery in Texas

Grade Level: 5th-8th | 1-2 60-minute class period(s). (Depending on schedule and pacing.)

Lesson Overview In this lesson, students work collaboratively to analyze four primary sources related to slavery, the domestic slave trade, and resistance. This lesson should follow some general instruction about slavery and the domestic slave trade and would work well situated in a unit covering the 1850s so that students can situate the primary sources within the larger historical context.

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