I recently discovered Reading Like a Historian, from Ken Halla’s US History Blog, which is a wonderful 
curriculum to engage students in historial inquiry. Students are no longer passive learners but engaged interpreters of history. The Standford History Education Group produced over 75 Lesson Plans based on primary documents and activities to engage your students in the study of United States History.
These lessons seems to align perfectly with the Common Core Standards of reading, analyzing, forming an opinion, and debating primary source materials. Students are not learning the material from a textbook or a teacher but engaging in real and meaningful historical inquiry.
Each of the lessons revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents modified for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities. The curriculum can help students use historical inquiry skills such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, 
and close reading. Here is a sample inquiry lesson, see the Japanese Internment Lesson Plan.
Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate primary sources and develop their own conclusions related to the historical events. I can’t think of a better way to learn history (other than living through the actual event).
Here is a sample Unit:
For More information and Citation: Visit the Standford History Education Group’s Website