Classroom Resources
Document Actions
Classroom Resources
The Chicago History Museum’s classroom resources include curriculum for grades 3 through 12 and include both online and downloadable activities; lesson plans span a variety of topics and meet a range of state learning standards.
History at your Fingertips: Great Chicago Stories
Enrich your curriculum with Great Chicago Stories,
a suite of historical fiction narratives and supporting classroom
resources inspired by the Museum's collection. Area educators selected
the topics, wrote the lessons, and tested the narratives and their
accompanying resources in their classrooms.
Download and print the narratives, images of artifacts, historical background documents, and suggested classroom activities. The site also includes an online interactive that encourages students to explore each story's neighborhood through photographs from the past and present. Topics include:
Grades 3 to 4
- Great Migration: A Bronzeville Story
- Sports History: A Tough Call
- Early Chicago: Trading Mystery
- Innovation and Entertainment: Best of the Fair
- Transportation: Joseph's Railroad Dreams
- Economics and Culture: Hot Dog!
Grades 9 to 12
- Abolitionist Movement in Chicago: Halfway to Freedom
- Public Housing and White Flight: Where the Neighborhood Ends
- Labor and the Haymarket Affair: His Father's Namesake
- Progressivism, Hull-House, and Immigration: Angelo's Saturdays
- Great Migration and the Jazz Age: It's a Long Way from Home
- Political Activism and the 1968 Democratic National Convention: Peace
> Explore Great Chicago Stories
Catholic Chicago Resources for Teachers
Grades 3 to 12
These resources add dimension to a field trip to see Catholic Chicago, a temporary exhibition on display through 2008. Materials include a timeline with pre-visit activities, sample gallery conversation cards, an exhibition map, and post-visit classroom activities. Designed for flexibility, they can be used with students of all ages, and modified to fit your classroom needs.
> Learn more about Catholic Chicago
> Learn more about how to use these materials before, during, and after your visit
The Encyclopedia of Chicago
Grades 7 to 12
No
research project is complete without using this online resource, which
includes A to Z entries, photographs with zooming capability, rich
maps, interpretive digital essays, and a wealth of historical sources.
> Explore the Encyclopedia of Chicago
Teen Chicago Curriculum
Grades 7 to 12
The Teen Chicago collection contains one hundred oral histories about growing up in Chicago during the twentieth century. This collection was created as part of the Teen Chicago Project, a multi-year initiative expanding teenage involvement at the Chicago History Museum.
A fifteen member Teen Council was hired and trained to conduct one hundred interviews between October, 2003 and January, 2004. Among those interviewed are internationally known oral historian Studs Terkel, author Jodee Blanco, and hip-hop artist Kanye West.
The Complete Teen Chicago Oral History collection is available at the Chicago History Museum Research Center.
> Download the Teen Chicago Curriculum Guide (794K)
> Download the Teen Chicago CD (111M)
My Chicago
Grades 3 to 5
Explore
the city's rich and diverse history through ten activities based on the
Chicago flag. Download the lessons and have your students use the
interactive online games.
History Lab
Grades 3 to 12
Inspired by the Museum's collection, local classroom teachers wrote and tested History Lab lesson plans. They are grouped into 12 topics. Lessons from each unit may be used independently or as a set. Each lesson includes a lesson plan, student materials, and reproductions of artifacts and/or photographs from the Museum's collection. These materials may be downloaded, copied, and adapted for use in your classroom.
- America's Documents of Freedom
- Slavery and Freedom in America
- Sew What! Samplers as Part of American History
- African American Life in the Nineteenth Century
- Fighting for Freedom: African Americans in the Civil War
- The Civil War: Up Close and Personal
- Through the Camera's Lens: The Civil War in Photographs
- Chicago's World's Fairs
- The First Ferris Wheel
- Playing in Chicago: Tootsie Toys, Tinker Toys, and Lincoln Logs
- Face-to-Face with the Great Depression
- History through Opposing Eyes: America and Protest
Great Chicago Stories and My Chicago are made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: great ideas brought to life. History Lab is made possible through a generous grant from the Polk Bros. Foundation. The electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago is the result of a ten-year collaboration between the Chicago History Museum, the Newberry Library, and Academic Technologies at Northwestern University