Democracy and Freedom: US History Capstone Project

How can I make real the ideals of freedom and democracy?

Develop the capacity for informed civic participation.

This mini-unit includes:

• 3 lessons
• 1 capstone project

The lessons that students explore in this mini-unit are intended to serve as a capstone experience that builds students’ capacity for civic participation while also tying together key themes from Facing History’s US History Curriculum Collection, particularly our focus on Democracy and Freedom.

This mini-unit aligns with the themes and sources from our US History materials, but it is also designed to be broad enough so that most educators will be able to access it even if they have not taught our curriculum collection in full. We encourage you to select key sources from units and/or inquiries that you have taught from our curriculum collection (particularly in Lessons 1 and 2) to tie back to students’ learning throughout the year.

The three lessons in this mini-unit are designed to prepare students for a final civic participation project entitled “My Freedom Dream.” We have created activities to help students at all stages of the project, but teachers will likely need to spend additional time helping students to fully implement the project (the “act” component). This includes creating a rubric or other format for evaluating students’ performance and assisting with any logistical aspects of implementation. 

For more guidance on implementing the project in your classroom, explore this teacher-facing handout: Planning the “My Freedom Dream” Capstone Project.
The teacher-facing handout refers to strategies from the resource From Reflection to Action: A Choosing to Participate Toolkit. We encourage you to have the toolkit on hand for reference as you implement this project.

Some of the suggested activities for implementing the "My Freedom Dream" Capstone Project require students to have access to a computer to conduct online research. We recommend taking care of logistics prior to teaching these activities, for example, by reserving the computer lab or laptop carts for students.