"Progressive Era", Regents US History Short Essays, by Teach Simple

About this resource

What's inside this resource

Two document-based short-essay sets pair primary-source excerpts from the Progressive Era with a Regents-style writing task, asking students to describe historical context and analyze relationships between the documents in a two- to three-paragraph essay. Set 1 pairs an 1904 Supreme Court opinion on the Northern Securities antitrust case with a period newspaper item on child-labor advocacy, while Set 2 pairs an 1889 Farmers' Alliance broadside about cotton-bagging prices with a 1911 New York Times report on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Each set includes glossary-style definitions of the task verbs (describe, identify, explain, analyze) and the types of document relationships (cause and effect, similarity/difference, turning point) that students are expected to demonstrate. A shared five-level scoring rubric with New York Regents-style numeric score conversions closes the file, and the resource is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike by author David Jones. For the same document-based-question format applied to an earlier period of US history, students can practice with the Alien and Sedition Acts primary source analysis, which pairs 1798 government documents with guided-analysis questions and a version with model answers filled in.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Analyze primary-source documents from the Progressive Era to describe their historical context.
Explain the relationship between paired documents using cause-and-effect, similarity/difference, or turning-point reasoning.
Evaluate a document's reliability by considering its audience, purpose, or bias.
Compose a Regents-style short essay of two to three paragraphs supported by evidence from primary sources.

Teaching tips

Review the task-verb glossary (describe, identify, explain, analyze) with students before assigning either set, since the essay prompts assume familiarity with these terms.
Use Set 1 for practice with cause-and-effect or similarity/difference reasoning, then use Set 2's added reliability-analysis requirement as a more advanced follow-up task.
Share the scoring rubric with students before they write, so they can see how depth of analysis and use of document evidence affect the score levels.

Skills covered

Primary-source analysis - students read excerpts from a 1904 Supreme Court opinion, an 1889 Farmers' Alliance broadside, and 1899-1911 newspaper reports to identify historical context.
Document-based essay writing - students compose a two- to three-paragraph Regents-style essay explaining cause-and-effect or similarity/difference relationships between paired documents.
Source reliability evaluation - students analyze how a document's audience, purpose, or point of view affects its reliability as evidence.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What additional analytical skill does Set 2 require beyond Set 1?

Set 2 adds a reliability-analysis requirement, asking students to explain how audience, purpose, bias, or point of view affects a document's usefulness as evidence, which Set 1 does not require.

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Curriculum

Standards, concepts & topics

Standards

CCSS.W.11.9 — Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. a. Apply grades 11–12 Reading standards to literature (e.g., “Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics”). b. Apply grades 11–12 Reading standards to literary nonfiction (e.g., “Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning [e.g., in U.S. Supreme Court Case majority opinions and dissents] and the premises, purposes, and arguments in works of public advocacy [e.g., The Federalist, presidential addresses]”).
CCSS.RI.10.6 — Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.
CCSS.W.11.4 — Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

Core concepts

Progressive Era
document-based question
primary source analysis
historical reasoning

Topics

us history regents frameworks short essay

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