Homeschool · Diploma track · Grade 11
United States History: free lessons and course outline
A full year of United States history for grade 11, built to be the student's whole course in the subject rather than a supplement. Eleven units, one for each California standard from 11.1 to 11.11, taught through documents rather than summaries of documents, because the skill being built is reading a source and working out what it can and cannot prove. Each lesson teaches one idea, works it through on a real text, and then asks you to do the same thing yourself, with a full model answer for every question. Every source quoted is public domain.
Eleventh grade covers the United States from the founding through the present, with the weight of the year falling after Reconstruction. This course is organized so that one unit corresponds to one California standard, which means the sequence here is the sequence the state expects and nothing in the framework is skipped. The course is built on two skills. The first is document analysis: every unit works from primary sources, because a student who has only read textbook summaries has never had to decide what a source proves. The second is periodization, the argument about where one era ends and another begins, which is where most real historical disagreement lives. It is designed to run alongside English 11, so the literature and the history of the same decades are read together.
- U1Unit 1: Founding, Constitution and Reconstruction6 lessons
- U2Unit 2: Industrialization, Immigration and Reform9 lessons
- U3Unit 3: Religion in American Life5 lessons
- U4Unit 4: Rise to World Power7 lessons
- U5Unit 5: The Twenties7 lessons
- U6Unit 6: Depression and New Deal6 lessons
- U7Unit 7: The Second World War8 lessons
- U8Unit 8: The Postwar Transformation7 lessons
- U9Unit 9: Foreign Policy Since 19457 lessons
- U10Unit 10: Civil Rights and Voting Rights8 lessons
- U11Unit 11: Contemporary Issues5 lessons
Every lesson, unit by unit
U1 is free to read below. The other units open with a free month or a paid plan.
U1 Unit 1: Founding, Constitution and ReconstructionFREE
U2 Unit 2: Industrialization, Immigration and Reform
- 2.1 Living and working conditions
- 2.2 The industrial city
- 2.3 The Americanization movement
- 2.4 Machines and reformers
- 2.5 Trusts and antitrust
- 2.6 An emerging economic power
- 2.7 Social Darwinism and Social Gospel
- 2.8 The Populists
- 2.9 The Progressives
U3 Unit 3: Religion in American Life
- 3.1 Religion and civic principles
- 3.2 The great revivals
- 3.3 Religious intolerance
- 3.4 Expanding pluralism
- 3.5 The religion clauses
U4 Unit 4: Rise to World Power
- 4.1 The Open Door
- 4.2 The war with Spain
- 4.3 The anti-imperialists
- 4.4 Panama and the canal
- 4.5 Three diplomacies
- 4.6 The war at home
- 4.7 From London to New York
U5 Unit 5: The Twenties
- 5.1 Harding, Coolidge and Hoover
- 5.2 Immigration restriction
- 5.3 Prohibition
- 5.4 The Nineteenth Amendment
- 5.5 The Harlem Renaissance
- 5.6 Radio and film
- 5.7 Mass production
U6 Unit 6: Depression and New Deal
- 6.1 The money question
- 6.2 Explaining the Depression
- 6.3 The human toll
- 6.4 The First New Deal
- 6.5 The Second New Deal
- 6.6 Organized labor
U7 Unit 7: The Second World War
- 7.1 Origins of involvement
- 7.2 Allied strategy
- 7.3 Who served
- 7.4 Roosevelt's war diplomacy
- 7.5 Internment
- 7.6 Wartime science
- 7.7 The atomic decision
- 7.8 The Marshall Plan
U8 Unit 8: The Postwar Transformation
- 8.1 The shift to white collar work
- 8.2 Mexican immigration and agriculture
- 8.3 Truman and labor
- 8.4 The new federal budget
- 8.5 Presidential power
- 8.6 Suburbs and environment
- 8.7 Postwar popular culture
U9 Unit 9: Foreign Policy Since 1945
- 9.1 The UN and human rights
- 9.2 Alliances and deterrence
- 9.3 The Cold War at home
- 9.4 Korea and Vietnam
- 9.5 The end of the Cold War
- 9.6 Middle East policy
- 9.7 The United States and Mexico
U10 Unit 10: Civil Rights and Voting Rights
- 10.1 Where the demand came from
- 10.2 The legal campaign to Brown
- 10.3 After Brown
- 10.4 The litigation coalition
- 10.5 Organizers and methods
- 10.6 Diffusion to other groups
- 10.7 The 1964 and 1965 Acts
- 10.8 The women's movement
U11 Unit 11: Contemporary Issues
- 11.1 Changing immigration policy
- 11.2 Domestic policy since Truman
- 11.3 Women, work and family
- 11.4 Watergate
- 11.5 Environment and poverty
Keep going in the full United States History course
All of U1 (Unit 1: Founding, Constitution and Reconstruction) is free to everyone, with no account. The course has 75 lessons, each with worked examples and practice problems that come with full solutions. A free account can also start a free month of the whole course, with no card.
Open this lesson in the courseSee the whole course