Teachers

Lesson Plans

The following teacher-submitted and Office of School Services lesson plans have been arranged by elementary- and secondary- grade level. However, many of the teaching ideas and classroom activities within these lessons are adaptable to various grade levels. We encourage you to explore. 

The Office of School Services is interested in publishing lesson plans dealing with state and local history. If you have a successful activity that you would like to share, please contact us.

Elementary

• Community Design Game
• Immigration: Packing a Traveler's Trunk
• The Flavor of Wisconsin
• Getting to Know Your City: An Introduction to Map Skills
• History Hunters Cemetery Tour
• I Saw It on the 6 O'Clock News: Wisconsin Forest History
• Legends of Dunn County
• Mammoth Mystery
• Old Map, New Map: Let's Compare
• Our Families' Stories in Wisconsin
• Passport Ready? Then Let the Adventure Begin
• Putting Wisconsin's Stamp on History
• Snowshoes in Pioneer Wisconsin
• Traveling in Wisconsin
• Wisconsin's Role in the Underground Railroad
• What Have You Done?: Discovering Family History
• Rowing to Old La Pointe

Secondary
(arranged in chronological order, with thematic/project-oriented lessons to follow)

• Father Jacques Marquette, 1673
• Little Elk, 1829
• The Black Hawk War, 1832
• Ethnicity, Occupation, and Death, 1850
• The Emigrant's Handbook and Guide to Wisconsin, 1851
• An "American Letter" by Norwegian Immigrants, 1854
• Abolitionist Broadside from Milwaukee, 1854
• Wisconsin in the Civil War  
• Life in a Lumber Camp, 1882
• Instruments of Change: Using the McCormick-International Harvester Poster Collection in the Classroom, 1883
• La Follette and the Progressive Era  
• Using U.S. Census Populations Schedules, 1900
• Teal Lake Lodge, 1923
• Conflict on the Homefront:  Wisconsin During World War I
• Letters Home During World War II
• Remembering the Holocaust
• Oral History: Oral Interview Training for the Hmong Oral History Project
• Oral History: Rubie Bond: The African American experience in Wisconsin
• Wisconsin Firsts
• Initiating National History Day in Your Classroom
• Using Architectural History to Raise Community Awareness
• World War II Japanese Internment
• Wisconsin World War II Stories: Part I: The Struggle
• Wisconsin World War II Stories: Part II: Europe
• Wisconsin World War II Stories: Part III: The Pacific
• Wisconsin World War II Stories: Part IV: The Home Front