Teacher Resources About the Adams Family

John Quincy Adams: One President's Adolescence

A document-based directed study featuring letters by and to John Quincy Adams from 1773, when he was 6 until 1782, the year he turned 15.

Abigail’s War: The American Revolution through the Eyes of Abigail Adams

A student activity book and teacher's guide based on letters between John and Abigail Adams during the American Revolution. It promotes writing and mathematical skills at the same time as it helps students relate to the world of the American Revolution.

The Adams Family of Massachusetts: A Legacy of Justice in Action

This curriculum unit for middle-school students uses primary sources to explore the Boston Massacre and John Adams's philosophy of justice as well as John Quincy Adams's work against slavery during the Amistad case.

Abigail Adams, the Writer: "My pen is always freer than my tongue."

This curriculum unit for high school English students revolves around the question: What was life, particularly the writing life, like for an American woman before, during, and after the founding of our nation?

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Birth of Party Politics in America

In this unit students will learn how the Federalist and Republican parties, represented by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, were founded, what they believed, and their struggle for the hearts and minds of the American people

Adams Family Foreign Policy: Letters and Diaries from Europe

This curriculum unit helps to provide high school students with insight into the Adams family members and their combined efforts in the realm of American foreign policy between 1781 and 1863.

John Adams’s Views on Citizenship: Lessons for Contemporary America

This curriculum unit engages students in an exploration of John Adams’s thinking about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a republic.