We are in the process of reviewing all of our PowerPoints and PDFs to make sure they are ADA compliant, which means a couple of things:
- You may encounter links we've broken inadvertently (particularly to PowerPoints). If you do come across a broken link, please let me know ASAP and I'll get you the information and get it fixed. We are trying to be vigilant, but I could use your help catching things.
- As I look over our many offerings, I have rediscovered some old favorites I think are worth sharing, particularly as we come to the end of the year.
For Montana History Classes
- “What Don’t You See? The Historical Accuracy of Charles M. Russell Paintings” (grades 7–12) asks students to evaluate Russell’s artwork to decide how accurately it depicts Montana history. After examining what they do see, students will look at what elements Russell left out and discuss ways in which Russell’s depictions of the “Old West” have shaped our view of Montana history.
Why I like it: It provides a review of Montana history from the early contact period through the 1910s while asking students to think critically about sources and perspective.
- Women at Work Lesson Plan: Clothesline Timeline. This primary-source based lesson asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook. (Designed for 4-12)
Why I like it: This lesson is shorter and less in depth than the lesson on Charlie Russell, so it should be easier to fit into your schedule. Like the Charlie Russell lesson, it looks at a wide swath of time (from the 1870s through the 2010s) but does it through the lens of women's opportunities. Also, it's just a load of fun.
For American History Classes
- Reader's Theater: Letters Home from Montanans at War (Designed for 7th-12th). This three-to-five period unit asks students to work in groups to read and interpret letters written by soldiers at war, from the Civil War to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. After engaging in close reading and conducting research to interpret the letters, they will perform the letters as reader’s theater.
Why I like it: I like this for an end of year project because it surveys a large period of time, but it looks at it from the angle of the ordinary people who were caught up in world events. It emphasizes the fact that every one of us is shaping history every day.
For Government Classes
- Resources for Teaching about the Montana Constitution. For the fiftieth anniversary of Montana’s 1972 constitution, we put together a list of resources for teaching about this foundational document. These include videos, lesson plans, readings, and a link to the document itself.
Why I like it: Every Montana student should understand our state constitution. Through the link above you can access everything from a multi-day lesson to a 23-minute video. Re that multi-day lesson, The Montana 1972 Constitutional Convention: Even if you don't have time to do the entire thing, you should have your students do Part 2: Analyzing the Preambles, a 50-100 minute exercise comparing the preambles of the 1889 and 1972 constitutions.
- Montana Women's Legal History Lesson Plan. (Designed for grades 11-12). In this 1-2 period activity, students will examine sample Montana legislation from 1871 to 1991 that particularly affected women's lives to explore the impact laws have on the lives of ordinary people and why laws change.
Why I like it: This is lesson requires students to contextualize legislation while exploring how laws impact the lives of ordinary people. I'd like every graduating senior to understand that government affects their lives and that they can influence government.
- Women and Sports: Tracking Change Over Time (Designed for grades 4-8) In this lesson, students learn about how Title IX (a federal civil rights law enacted in 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in education) changed girls’ opportunities to participate in school sports by collecting and analyzing the data to look at change in women’s sports participation over time.
Why I like it: It drives home the fact that legislation affects every one of us. Yes--we designed this for grades 4-8 but it would be easily adaptable to high school.
Stand-alone Projects (for ELA or Social Studies)
- Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 8-12) This lesson uses essays published on the Montana Women’s History website to help students explore how ordinary people’s lives intersect with larger historical events and trends and to investigate how people’s choices impact their communities. After analyzing two profiles of American Indian women, students are asked to conduct interviews with people in their own community to learn about how that person has chosen to shape the world around him or her.
Why I like it: This lesson focuses on agency, and conveys the idea that, no matter the larger circumstances, we all have agency. Don't have time for an interview project? Simply stop after Part 1.
P.S. We are holding our last Third Tuesday PD on April 21 at 4:30 p.m. It is on teaching with cemeteries, which is another great end of year project. If you are interested in exploring how to harness your local cemetery to engage your students in community study, you can use this link to register for this session.
Glacier National Park’s fifty-mile-long Going-to-the-Sun Road is known for its breathtaking views. Congress appropriated the first funds to build the “Transmountain Highway” in 1921. Constructing a road over such mountainous terrain presented a variety of unique challenges including sheer cliffs, a short construction season, and sixty-foot snow drifts. More than ten years later the first automobile crossed the park’s new Transmountain Highway in October 1932.
In 1876–1877, the US military targeted the Lakota (Sioux), Tsetsėhesėstȧhase naa Suhtaio (Northern Cheyenne), and Hinono'ei (Arapaho), who remained on unceded hunting grounds rather than moving to reservations. The tribes fought back, most famously winning a battle at Little Bighorn against Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his troops on June 25–26, 1876. Custer’s name became a rallying cry for those seeking to avenge the rout.
Hopeful miners flocked to Grasshopper Creek in 1862, and Bannack, Montana’s first boom town, sprang to life. Briefly named Montana’s territorial capital, Bannack became a near ghost town after gold was discovered at Virginia City. Quartz mining rebounded in the 1870s, and Bannack served as the Beaverhead County seat until 1881. In 1954, the State of Montana acquired most of the town and it became a state park.
Charlie Russell, Montana’s most beloved artist, and his wife Nancy built their modest frame house in Great Falls in 1900. Three years later, they constructed Charlie’s log studio. Nancy noted that Charlie “loved that . . . building more than any other place on earth and never finished a painting anywhere else.”
Pictograph, Middle, and Ghost Caves are exceptional for the rare preservation of perishable items and for their stunning art. Early inhabitants painted more than one hundred images on the walls, including one more than two-thousand years old. Artifacts offer evidence of the extensive Indigenous trade network. They include the fragment of a 1,370-year-old coiled basket, which resembles those made in the Great Basin, and a thong necklace strung with Pacific shell beads.
Lewis and Clark Caverns, one of the largest and most remarkable caves in the Northern Rockies, became Montana’s first state park in 1937. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)—a Depression era jobs program—developed into the site we know today. The CCC cleaned and surveyed the caves, blasted a 538-foot exit tunnel, installed electric lighting, and built an access road, a Rustic-style headquarters building, a visitors’ center, and a stone latrine.
When the first train arrived in Scobey, the two-story, Western False Front–style Commercial Hotel—today the south half of the courthouse—was the new townsite’s largest building. After 1915, gambling, dog fighting, drinking, and prostitution became central to the hotel’s business model. In 1920, county officials purchased the hotel for use as a courthouse. It is Montana’s last functioning false-front courthouse and perhaps the only bordello converted to government use.
