The following lessons were developed and tested by Mount Vernon's Education Department and contributing teachers in the field, including graduates of our summer George Washington Teachers' Institutes, and have been recently revised and expanded. They are standards-aligned, incorporate research, historical thinking, and the use of primary sources, and may be adapted for use across middle and high school grades.
Lesson titles and descriptions are listed below. Please note that all lessons may be downloaded from the "Related Files" links at the bottom of this page.
Who Are Our Greatest Presidents?: The President of the United States receives media coverage on a daily basis and is often ranked against or compared to past presidents. This lesson will help students actively develop their own conclusions by providing them with a systematic analytical method to compare past presidents and current or potential future presidents and to determine their own research-based ranking system.
From George to Martha: Writing a Sonnet Using Primary Sources: Only two known letters from George Washington to Martha Washington are known to exist, as Martha destroyed her personal letters from George after his death. From these two surviving documents, historians have long tried to analyze the relationship between the two. In this assignment, students will perform their own analyses by reading the letters and writing an original English sonnet – a poetic form often used to convey themes of love, romance, and relationships - from George to Martha Washington.
Using Political Cartoons to Understand Historical Events: In 2005, Mount Vernon invited several well-known political cartoonists from newspapers across the country to draw cartoons focusing on major issues of George Washington’s presidency. These cartoons are displayed in the galleries of the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center at Mount Vernon. Students will analyze uncaptioned versions of these cartoons and background information about the historical issues depicted, create their own appropriate captions and exhibit labels, then compare and contrast their writing with the originals.
Manners and Mores of Washington's America: It is doubtful that the 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation that George Washington hand-copied sometime before the age of sixteen actually represents his own original list of decorum rules. The list was likely a school curriculum staple, and copying it may have been nothing more than a way to practice penmanship. But whether it was his personal list or a standard “recipe” of general rules for civil behavior that many children learned, the Rules can provide a window into the ethics and manners of Washington’s times. Students will examine the Rules, classify and categorize the concerns addressed, discuss what it would be like to live in a world imbued with such guidelines, analyze what expectations govern their own behavior, and generate a list of Rules covering the same categories they identified in Washington’s list.
George Washington and Civic Virtue: The Necessary Elements of the Republic: Students will analyze Washington-related primary source documents, including the Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior, his First Inaugural Address, and his Farewell Address, examine the concepts of character and civic virtue as written about and exemplified by George Washington, and discuss the connections between these basic principles and the task of founding, fostering, and preserving a strong constitutional democracy.
More lesson plans coming soon!
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