THE AMERICAN HISTORY DETECTIVE BOOK

These activities let students become real crime-scene investigators as they consider clues that might have been left behind after a historical event, including primary source documents and easy-to-find props. Students read a summary of an event and ask who, what, where, when, and why questions for scenes ranging from Columbus’s arrival in the Americas to the Vietnam War. For each of the 16 lessons, students fill out a reproducible activity sheet to organize their findings, then answer questions, do optional further research, and role-play a conversation between a detective and a historical figure.