History Happened Here: Teacher Toolkit
Our country’s revolutionary founding ideals included liberty, equality, justice, self-determination, and the pursuit of happiness. Engaging with these subjects has been at times challenging, inspirational, and even contentious. Focusing on an individual, group, location, or event at any point in our nation’s history, examine how your local community has dealt with one or more of these revolutionary ideals
The 250th anniversary of the United States will bring considerable focus onto national events and well-known figures in our country’s history. History Happened Here will sharpen that focus to local communities in New Jersey. With the assistance of teachers and those in the public history sector, students grades 5 to 12 will research subjects of their choosing in connection to an assigned prompt. Research projects may be completed by individuals or groups of up to five students. As students read primary source documents, analyze data, and design their projects, they will utilize an array of historical thinking skills and social studies disciplinary practices aligned to the New Jersey Student Learning Standards.
Students are required to make at least one visit to a public history site. While any library, historical society, cultural organization, or museum will meet this requirement, a list of partner public history sites are available by county in the student section.
Local governments will showcase student work and select exemplars to be featured in a state-wide exhibit. Where possible, middle and high school students will travel to local elementary schools to share their discoveries and, in turn, elementary school students will be tasked with creating artistic interpretations of the presentations from the high school projects.
Research projects may take any form including, but not limited to: essays, physical exhibitions, videos, podcasts, and websites.
Home-school students and students from non-participating school districts will be allowed to independently submit their work to RevolutionNJ for consideration of inclusion in the end-of-program celebration.