A Teacher's Guide to Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story (Young Reader's Edition, Volume 1)

A wonderfully written, sweeping narrative history of the United States that will help Americans discover the land they call home.

Guide for Teachers using Land of Hope: Young Readers Edition. Middle School — Grades 6-8

The FIRST Teachers Guide to accompany the two-volume narrative Land of Hope: Young Readers Edition

This Teacher's Guide to the Young Reader's Edition of Wilfred McClay's Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story is an invaluable supplemental resource for teachers who use the Young Reader's Edition as a textbook for middle-grade courses in US history. Prepared by McClay in collaboration with John McBride, a master teacher with more than thirty years of secondary and collegiate teaching experience, it is an exceptionally rich and useful tool for classroom instructors.

Each chapter of this Teacher's Guide receives a five-part treatment: a short summation of the chapter's contents questions and answers about the chapter, a list of key names and terms appearing within each one, a crossword puzzle based on those names and terms, and one or more primary source documents for class analysis with accompanying questions and answers. Longer documents are broken into shorter passages with questions interspersed to help younger readers. 

This Teacher's Guide also features a collection of map exercises as well as special units to assist instructors in teaching students about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the two-party system.

Wilfred M. McClay is Professor of History and the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. 

John D. McBride has more than fifty years experience in teaching US history. He earned a BA and an MA at Rice University (1968, 1971) and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia (1977). After an interruption for the US Army Reserves, he and wife Mary Jane raised two children while working as dorm parents at the Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he served as head of the History Department and developed a two-year Western Civilization curriculum. He has taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, in both the Political Science and the History Departments. He worked as a volunteer instructor at Walker State Prison, Georgia's faith- and character-based prison. John enjoys using simulation games and debates and other group activities in his classes whenever possible. He is the author of Bloody Dawn: The Final Assault on the Alamo and other rules for reenacting battles with miniatures.