At Anti-textbook.org, we have curated the best active learning lesson plans for American History Teachers.  For over a year, we’ve been sifting through the resources on amazing free sites like Stanford History Education Group (S.H.E.G.), Gilder Lehrman, and Facing History and Ourselves.  We’ve picked the best activities and given you a brief description.  You could skim through these sites yourself and read each of the 15-page activity descriptions.  Or you can let us do the work of searching and synthesizing so that you can get some sleep.


Because your teaching might be remote or in-person or both, we’ve added a description of the remote readiness of each lesson. In many lessons, compelling primary sources from multiple perspectives have been edited for length and combined with an activity, often times a group activity. For remote students, teachers can easily post or email a link to the primary sources and/or the full activity. Students can work together via phone or video conferencing to complete the assignment or do it themselves. When they’re done, they can post the completed assignment to your LMS or email it to you. And in many cases, the very same lesson can be printed and completed in class.


Each box below contains a lesson. The icons at the top of each box tell you if the lesson contains primary sources, secondary sources, research, group work, a writing assignment, maps, videos, or games. The description tells you which free site the lesson comes from, what grade levels it is intended for, how much class time it will take, and how much reading is required. Click the blue button at the bottom of each box for more information and the ability to bookmark the lesson to your profile.

Lessons on this page are about British Colonies in America.  We have divided the Activities into 3 categories, including the heading at the end of every page for OER Textbooks and Primary Source centers:

• Native Americans
• Columbus and Contact
• General (OER Textbooks, etc.)