BRING EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION INTO THE CLASSROOM! Here you will find a series of media-rich lesson plans designed for immediate use. The lesson plans -- which adhere to National Learning Standards -- contain complete, blow-by-blow instructions for classroom implementation, downloadable student handouts, and suggestions for cross-curricular extensions. The lesson plans may be completed as pre- or post-viewing activities for students watching FRONTIER HOUSE, or in generalized units on westward expansion. While you are building your students' knowledge of the settlement of the west, you will also be building their technology skills, as each lesson contains structured and integrated use of the Internet. Feel free to adapt the lesson plans to meet your students' needs and your curricular goals.   Through the activities presented in this lesson, students will become familiar with the tenets of the Homestead Act, the shifting borders of the American frontier, and the life faced by homesteaders. more ...   Students will analyze a song from the late 1840s which recounts a young couple's journey to their new home on the frontier. After identifying the "story within the song," students will compose additional verses, based on online primary source documents. more ...   In this lesson, students will explore life in the 1800s and become aware of events and inventions that shaped the era as they compare and contrast FRONTIER HOUSE's real life families to characters in Margaret Peterson Haddix's novel RUNNING OUT OF TIME. more ...   Who is the "ideal" family of FRONTIER HOUSE participants? Let your students decide. This lesson can be used as a pre- or post- viewing activity for the PBS series The Frontier House. more ...   Students will reflect on their own basic needs in the year 2002, and compare these needs to those of homesteaders in the 1880s. After consulting a historical essay and online primary source documents, students will participate in an online interactive activity. more ... [an error occurred while processing this directive]