How can I get my students even more engaged during our trip to Boston?
Boston is the perfect place to explore science, American history, and art in more depth.
Many of the sites that you will visit in Boston have developed lesson plans to begin engagement in the classroom. Provide a deeper appreciation for the places you will visit by exploring a focus topic prior to the trip.
Boston Lesson Plans
Freedom Trail Educational Resources:
Massachusetts Historical Society Lesson Plans, Topics Include:
- The Adams Family of Massachusetts: A Legacy of Justice in Action
- Adams Family Foreign Policy: Letters and Diaries from Europe
- John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Birth of Party Politics in America
- Abigail Adams, the Writer: “My pen is always freer than my tongue”
- John Adams’s Views on Citizenship: Lessons for Contemporary America
- John Quincy Adams: One President’s Adolescence
- Abigail’s War: The American Revolution through the Eyes of Abigail Adams
- Johnny Tremain and the Members of the Long-Room Club
- From Tea to Shining Sea: A Primary Document-Based Unit on the Boston Tea Party
- John and Abigail Adams in Times of Change: the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Smallpox Epidemic during the American Revolution
- The Siege of Boston: A Document-Based Lesson
- Creative Collaborators and Communicators: The Abolitionists and their Propaganda
- Chief Justice William Cushing and the Abolition of Slavery
- Slavery in Massachusetts, 1630-1860
- Boston as the Athens of America
- Deviancy and Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
- The Massachusetts Civil War Experience
- Massachusetts Women and the Civil War
National Historical Parks Lesson Plans, Topics Include:
- The Emerald Necklace: Boston’s Green Connection
- The Battle of Bunker Hill: Now We Are at War
- Embattled Farmers and the Shot Heard Round the World: The Battles of Lexington and Concord.
- Birthplace of John F. Kennedy: Home of the Boy Who Would Be President
- Through a Mother’s Eyes, Rose Kennedy in Brookline
- Mount Auburn Cemetery: A New American Landscape
- Boston’s Arnold Arboretum: A Place for Study and Recreation
- Saugus Iron Works: Life and Work at an Early American Industrial Site
Museum of Science, Boston Educational Resources:
USS Constitution Museum Lesson Plans, Topics Include:
- Making a Compass and Magnetic Attraction
- Sailors Telling Time: Half House Glass
- Ship’s Surgeon: Illness and Injury aboard Naval Ships
- Medicine in 1812
- Working Music: Sea Chanties & Call-and-Response Poetry
- Build a Simple Sextant
- Reloading Relay
- Marines on the Maintop: How High is that Similar Triangle?
- Simple Machines on Constitution
- Coopers on Constitution: Building a Barrel
- Calculating Area and Volume: How Much Can Constitution Hold?
- Gun Drill Team Building
- How to be a Great Navigator
- Build a Simple Sextanthttps://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lesson-Plan-Science-Build-a-Simple-Sextant-NASA.pdf
- Ship’s Super Superstitions & Shakespeare
Boston National Historical Park Teacher Resources:
Interactive Maps
- The Atlantic Empire of Peter Faneuil
- The Siege of Boston
- Patriots of Color Enlistment
- Mapping Women’s Suffrage in Boston
Activities
Plimouth Plantation, Lesson Plans and Activity Topics Include:
- Unit 1: Patuxet
- Unite 2: Leadership & Diplomacy
- Unit 3: Growing Corn in Plymouth and Patuxet
- Unit 4: 1621 Harvest Celebration
- Unit 5: Giving Thanks
- Thanksgiving Interactive:You Are the Historian
- Talk Like a Pilgrim
- Riddles
- Podcast: Interwoven
New England Aquarium Lesson Plans, Topics Include:
- Adaption & Survival
- Dive Deeper
- Giant Ocean Tank Visit
- Giant Ocean Tank Census
- Follow One Animal
- Invent an Invertebrate
- New England Marine Animal Adaptations
- Penguin Adaptations
- Penguin Observations
- Seal Observations
- Secret Animal
- Shark Scientist Tools
- Shark Observation
- Climate Change and the Ocean
- Concept Learning: Salt Marsh
- Fishworks
- New England Marine Animal Adaptations
- Engineering Ocean Currents
John F. Kennedy Library Lesson Plans, Topics Include:
- Political Debates: Advising a Candidate
- Analyzing the Rhetoric of JFK’s Inaugural Address
- Why Choose the Moon
- The President’s Desk: A Resource Guide for Teachers, Grades 4-12
- 1963: The Struggle for Civil Rights
- A President’s Day
- Integrating Ole Miss
- Leaders in the Struggle for Civil Rights
- Americans in Space
- A Night to Remember
- Breaking Gender Barriers: A Female Space Trainee Advocates for Women in Space
- Examining The Equal Pay Act of 1963
- Fighting for Equality: Esther Peterson Leads the Way on Equal Pay
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