Lesson Plans

Calling all Educators!

During the summer of 2024, the Santa Cruz County School Superintendent’s Office invited educators to create Arizona Academic Standards-aligned lesson plans on local history topics on Nogales and Santa Cruz County. Responding to the call, a small group of educators (Curriculum Consultants) created lesson plans from the Beyond Fronteras “Nogalepedia” history articles developed by the Beyond Fronteras Project’s historians. Educators were not required to conduct their own historical research to complete their lesson plans. Ideal Curriculum Consultants possessed creativity, pedagogical awareness, and good writing skills. The educators/curriculum consultants were paid by the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grant which funded the Beyond Fronteras project.

The elaboration of each lesson plan was guided by the following criteria:

1. Be aligned to 1-2 relevant Arizona History and Social Studies Standards
2. Emphasize local history as a tool for understanding larger regional, national, and international concepts present in the Arizona History and Social Studies Standards
3. Utilize students’ local social context as a means for teaching larger academic concepts applicable in the wider world
4. Encourage acquisition of new vocabulary terms
5. Be inclusive of students of different learning needs, including English-language learners and students with special learning needs.

Available Lesson Plans:

All available lesson plans are created for the high school (grades 9-12) level, but can be adapted as needed to lower grade levels.

Our lesson plans are available for download as PDF format files and are arranged according to the identification numbers (A2, B6, etc.) which related to the Nogalepedia article they are based on.

Thank you to the local educators who participated in our paid lesson plan-writing initiative for the “Beyond Fronteras” project!