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 was educated at Rice University (BA 1968, MA 1971) and the University of Virginia (PhD 1977). He taught high-school history in Chattanooga, Tennessee from 1974 to 2010 at the Baylor School and the David Brainerd Christian School. He has also taught political science and history as an adjunct for twenty-five years at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After retirement, he spent six years mentoring and teaching as a volunteer at Walker State Prison, Georgia’s faith-and character-based prison.