Allegories are similar to metaphors: in both the author uses one subject to represent another, seemingly unrelated, subject. However, unlike metaphors, which are generally short and contained within a few lines, an allegory extends its representation over the course of an entire story, novel, or poem. This lesson plan will introduce students to the concept of allegory by using George Orwell’s widely read novella, Animal Farm, which is available on Project Gutenberg.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Atomic Bomb and the Nuclear Age it started. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion. Created by Sal Khan.

The documents for this activity are drawn from those that might be typically found on an advanced placement history test, supplemented by materials featured in Teachrock lessons. As such, this activity may be used as a means to prepare students for an advanced placement test, or as an assessment tool at the end of a Cold War unit. A variety of approaches are provided that allow teachers to use the documents to engage their students in the classroom.

This lesson highlights the changing relationship between the city center and the suburb in the postwar decades, especially in the 1950s. Students will look at the legislation leading up to and including the Federal Highway Act of 1956. They will also examine documents about the history of Levittown, the most famous and most important of the postwar suburban planned developments.

This lesson plan attempts to dissolve the artificial boundary between domestic and international affairs in the postwar period to show students how we choose to discuss history.

Most historians agree that the world has never come closer to nuclear war than it did during a thirteen-day period in October 1962, after the revelation that the Soviet Union had stationed several medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. This lesson will examine how this crisis developed, how the Kennedy administration chose to respond, and how the situation was ultimately resolved.

Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.

Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.

In this 15-minute video lesson Sal gives an outline of the 1973 Allende Coup in Chile and Pinochet's Junta. [History playlist: Lesson 11 of 26]

This 14-minute video lesson discusses the Bay of Pigs Invasion. [History playlist: Lesson 7 of 26]

This 19-minute video lesson provides an overview of the Cuban Missel Crisis. [History playlist: Lesson 8 of 26]

In this 9-minute video lesson, Sal compares the pattern of U.S. Cold War interventions in Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam. [History playlist: Lesson 10 of 26]

This 15-minute video lesson gives a basic overview of U.S. history from World War II to the Vietnam War. It briefly looks at Hitler, the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Space Race. [History playlist: Lesson 4 of 26]

This 18-minute video lesson provides an overview of the Vietnam War. [History playlist: Lesson 9 of 26]

Now celebrated in more than 40 countries, Jazz Appreciation Month offers an opportunity to explore cultural dynamics that inform jazz music across places, as well as the idiosyncratic ways in which jazz artists reimagine and perform their local for the global.

Learn about the effects that the Second World War had on jazz music as well as the contributions that jazz musicians made to the war effort. This lesson will help students explore the role of jazz in American society and the ways that jazz functioned as an export of American culture and a means of resistance to the Nazis.

In 1950, North Korean forces, armed mainly with Soviet weapons, invaded South Korea in an effort to reunite the peninsula under communist rule. This lesson will introduce students to the conflict by having them read the most important administration documents related to it.