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Although some of the lesson plans are relatively vague, this a pretty solid site overall. There are a number of lesson plans here that could be adapted to fit your specific unit/essential questions. The best thing about these lessons is that the lesson documents (PDFs) contain a wide variety of primary and secondary sources that you can use in a variety of ways. The Zinn Education Project is free to sign up for and use.

"If teachers don't have enough time to ask, answer, reflect on, and revise their thoughts about the questions above, then we shouldn't be filling their time with things other people get paid to do, like writing curriculum, writing fancy-schmancy benchmark tests, looking at data that's not useful on the individual student level, or discussing which minutes of the day the bathrooms will be open to students." So many things going on in this article...Personally, I found this statement to be the main standout. I agree with this completely - instruction comes first and all the rest is secondary. If you do a great job with instruction, many of the other time eaters/wasters should fall into place and take care of themselves naturally.