For Middle School

You have one unit, thirty students, and limited time. This page hands you the plan: what to teach first, what a week looks like, and where single lessons fit the classes you already teach.

Teach Jewish History gives middle-school teachers free lessons in Jewish history and the history of antisemitism, built from primary sources. Read in order, its more than 60 Chapters also form a full online textbook, written at high-school level. This guide is the grades 6–8 path into it. You do not need to learn every Chapter. You need one good lesson for tomorrow, and a plan for one week. Both are below. The pages all print, and none requires a login.

Two factsWhy would I teach this?

• It fits more than one unit. The same history runs through classes you already teach: ancient civilizations, medieval Europe, U.S. immigration, World War II, the Cold War. The chart below shows where each fits.
• Your state likely requires it. A 2026 federal review found that 42 of the 50 states and D.C. require Holocaust education through academic standards or state law. Many requirements arrive without a curriculum, and building one is left to the teacher.

Yes. Here is why.Am I qualified to teach this?

If you teach social studies, world history, or ELA in grades 6–8, in a public, private, or religious school, yes. You do not need to be a specialist. The pages are written for readers new to the subject: terms are defined, events are dated, people are introduced. If you can assign a reading and lead a discussion, you can teach this.

Not a new courseWhere does it fit what I already teach?

The site slots into units you already have. Your WWII or Holocaust unit gets the five-day unit below. And most other units in a middle-school year have a Chapter that fits inside them as a single lesson:

These Chapters sit at the site’s regular reading level, grades 9–12. Strong readers handle them.

In ELA, every Chapter is document-based reading practice: primary sources, discussion questions, and close reading, aligned to the Common Core literacy-in-history standards (the RH strand). The Chapters also pair with books your classes already read. Teaching The Diary of a Young Girl or Night? The Years Before the Killing and The Camp System hold the history around them. Teaching Number the Stars? The real Danish rescue is in Jewish Resistance & Rescue. And two books on the site’s own shelves reach the middle grades: Number the Stars itself, and All-of-a-Kind Family, the Lower East Side in 1912 through five sisters, a natural companion to Emma Lazarus and American Jewry.

Each Chapter named in this guide lists its standards codes in its Classroom Connections section.

One class period, fully plannedWhat do I teach tomorrow?

Teach this one first: The Years Before the Killing, 1933–1939. It answers how this happened, with dated laws and documents, in plain language for middle-school readers.

That is one complete lesson. If it works for your room, the week below extends it.

Five days, one storyWhat if I have a week? The five-day unit.

Five Chapters, in an order that tells one story: the lie, the laws, the machinery, the response, the aftermath. Each is a full lesson on the model above. The history is told through documents and numbers, and the imagery is memorials and records, not atrocity photographs.

Day 1 opens with a lie that was already centuries old. Keep one question running through the week: why did it keep coming back? Every era gave a different reason for the same target: enemy of the faith, then economic parasite, then racial threat, then hidden conspiracy. Ask students what that tells them about the reasons. If the question comes up in class, The Nazi Synthesis holds the evidence on one page.

Short on days? Teach Days 2, 3, and 4.

For world history, ELA, and civicsWhat if I can only spare one lesson?

Each of these stands alone and fits a course you already teach:

• Who Are the Jews? · the site’s front door: a people, not only a religion. The right first Chapter when the subject is new to your class.
• Ritual Objects and Material Culture · one of the most accessible reads on the site. A civilization told through the objects it made. Fits any culture or world-history unit.
• Emma Lazarus · the poet whose sonnet with the line “Give me your tired, your poor” has been mounted on a plaque in the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal since 1903. Fits U.S. history and ELA.
• The Jewish Life Cycle · birth to mourning, taught the way schools teach any tradition’s customs.

The site’s classroom toolsWhat else can I use in class?

Beyond the Chapters, the site keeps a set of tools built for the classroom:

• Timeline. Project it as a warm-up, or have students place the day’s lesson on it.
• The Museum. Manuscripts, coins, and objects, nearly every one credited to the institution that holds it. One object, projected, opens a class.
• Virtual Field Trips. Visits to archaeological sites, memorials, and historic Jewish quarters, from your projector.
• Films. Curated film and video by Unit, with grade bands marked: documentaries, archives, survivor testimony.
• The Legal Record. The judgments, treaties, and statutes of the post-Holocaust era, each dated and linked to its primary document. The natural next page after Day 5.
• The Recurring Cycle. Eight patterns, by lies, by law, and by force, then rebuilt, traced on one page from the ancient world to today.
• Misconceptions. Beliefs students bring to class, set beside the documented record, one claim at a time.
• Glossary. Key terms defined plainly. Students can look up their own.
• The K–5 program. Full ready-to-teach lessons on the foundations. They double as background reading for teachers and students who want the basics first.

The section to read before you need itWhat if a parent or my principal pushes back?

Here is what to point to.

• Each Chapter cites its sources on the page. Documents, laws, and figures are credited, most with a link to the archive or museum that holds the record.
• For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, start with the dates. The Modern State of Israel sets out the main events since 1967 in order, with its sources listed at the end of the Chapter.
• Hate texts are cited, never linked.
• The standards are public. The site’s editorial standards are published at Editorial Standards, and the Chapters in this guide name the state standards they support.
• You can answer “who runs this site?” Teach Jewish History is a free, independent educational resource, published by The Makor Project. Its About page explains how it is built, and its published standards govern every page.

If a parent or administrator asks, you can say: “This lesson is built from primary documents, credited on the page. Many are linked to the institutions that hold them: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust memorial and archive), even the German state’s own federal archives. Here is the page. You can check the sources yourself.”

And if a student repeats an antisemitic claim mid-lesson: put the document back on the screen and ask what it says. The site’s Misconceptions and Hate Symbols pages each take one claim, or one symbol, and set the record beside it.

The anatomy of a ChapterQuick answers

What is on a Chapter page?

• A readable history, written to be taught or assigned.
• Primary sources and images, with their credits.
• Discussion questions that ask students to reason from the documents.
• Classroom Connections: the courses it fits and the standards it supports.
• Key takeaways, for review and exit tickets.
• A printable PDF, one button, the whole Chapter.

Can my students read it? The Years Before the Killing is written in plain language for middle-school readers. The site overall sits at grades 9–12: strong readers work from the pages, and the printable PDFs make excerpting easy for everyone else. Teaching grades 9–12? For High School is that guide. For grades K–5, there is a separate program with full ready-to-teach lessons.

Do I need approval to use this? That depends on your district’s materials policy. In many districts, supplemental materials for a course you already teach sit within a teacher’s discretion. In others, a principal or department signs off. Adopting it as a core text, or building a course on it, goes through your school’s normal process, and the Sample Syllabi page carries an approval packet built for it. If your district’s web filter blocks the site, your IT office can unblock it. It is a free educational reference with published standards.

What does it cost, and how do I print? It is free, with no login. Every Chapter prints from its own “Open PDF” button. This guide itself is a printable PDF, ready to hand a colleague. The For Teachers hub has the eight Teaching Guides, a free professional-development course, and the ten principles for teaching this history with care. Questions, or a story about how a lesson went: education@teachjewishhistory.org.

Start with the one lesson. The rest is here when you want it.