This free online course will give you the historical background, primary source materials, and instructional strategies you need to teach the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans in the secondary school classroom. Each learning activity in this online course is meant to give you a sense of the learning experience your students will have in your classroom.

The course will take approximately five to six hours to complete. The learning activities are aligned to Common Core State Standards, the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards (National Council for the Social Studies), and the Advanced Placement U.S. History Curriculum Framework skills. Over 600 teachers have taken the workshop version of this course and have helped revise and refine the course.

To promote thinking and inquiry, each primary source in this course has been paired with a thinking routine–a process and structure developed by Harvard Project Zero’s Visible Thinking. Thinking Routines have a few simple steps to evoke deep thinking, which can prompt questions and learning. They can be used in many different contexts with a variety of content.