The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching. Find Library of Congress lesson plans and more that meet Common Core standards, state content standards, and the standards of national organizations.
Read to use tools for teaching with documents in the classroom. Thousands of primary sources selected from the National Archives.
National Archives, Teaching with Documents page
Reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections.
Teaching Channel is a video showcase -- online and on TV -- of inspired and effective teaching practices. (from Teaching Channel website)
Digital Public Library of America Exhibitions
These digitized exhibits collect a range of primary materials related to American history, sourced from libraries, archives, and museums from across the United States.
An exemplary resource that links to online learning materials. Includes annotations, peer reviews, and links to related assignments all searchable by subject, target age-group, and material type.
While many good resources can indeed be found on the free web (Google), it is important to teach students the value and benefits of library databases and how to use them.
Discuss the similarities and differences with your students.
Use the tabs to direct your students to different types of information - make sure to let them know what they will find in each type and why they should consult those resources.
To find scholarly articles related to your topic, search through these essential, comprehensive humanities databases.
Some of these databases are focused on topics related to U.S. History and contain scholarship and secondary sources. Other databases focus on articles from history adjacent disciplines that may be helpful to explore more of your topic.
The United States, 1763-2001 by
This book takes a new approach to teaching and learning early US history from 1763 to 2001 at A level. It meets the needs of teachers and students studying for today's revised AS and A2 exams. In a unique style, The United States, 1763-2001 focuses on the key topics within the period. Each topic is then comprehensively explored to provide background, essay writing advice and examples, source work and historical skills exercises. The key topics featured include: * the struggle for the Constitution, 1763-1877 * the American Civil War * Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal * foreign policy, 1890-1991 * civil rights, 1863 - 1992.
Conducting Authentic Historical Inquiry: Engaging learners with sources and emerging technologies by
Engaging students with primary sources that foster inquiry, critical thinking, and deductive reasoning skills, all of which are vitally important to success in school and beyond. Simply inserting primary sources into the classroom is not enough. This resource uses the best of emerging Internet applications (Web 2.0) to capture the interest of today's students who have grown up using diverse technologies and multiple applications such as podcasts, social networks, social bookmarks, digital curation, and blogs. Readers will learn about the SOURCES Framework, an innovative approach for scaffolding inquiry-rich social studies instructional practices. Filled with multiple classroom-ready examples that seamlessly integrate Web 2.0 applications, the authors provide readers with the tools and confidence to create instructional opportunities to engage learners in authentic historical inquiry. The goal is to give students the skills and knowledge necessary to think critically, engage with sources, and create authentic, evidence-based narratives. Conducting Authentic Historical Inquiry will be of interest to instructional technology coordinators and university faculty teaching courses in instructional technology and design. Book Features: Offers effective and engaging methods for teaching with primary and secondary sources while seamlessly integrating emerging technologies. Fosters critical thinking skills and deductive reasoning skills while allowing instructors an opportunity to personalize learning environments. Provides students with opportunities to authentically construct historical narratives, replicating methods utilized by historians. Introduces an innovative framework for teaching with primary and secondary sources. Includes web links that make it easy for the reader to see examples and resources and video walk-throughs related to many of the Web 2.0 tools.
Teaching U. S. History: Dialogues among social studies teachers and historians
Teaching U.S. History offers an innovative approach to social studies teaching by connecting historians to real-world social studies classrooms and social studies teachers. In an unusual, even unprecedented, dialogue between scholars and practitioners, this book weds historical theory and practice with social studies pedagogy. Seven chapters are organized around key US History eras and events from the time of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and are complemented by detailed discussions of a particular methodological approach, including primary source analysis, oral history and more. Interviews with historians open each chapter to bring the reader into important conversations about the most cutting edge issues in U.S. history today and are followed by essays from expert teachers on the rewards and challenges of implementing these topics in the classroom. Each chapter also includes a wealth of practical resources including suggested key documents or artifacts; a lesson plan for middle school and another suitable for high school; and suggested readings and questions for further study. Teaching U.S. History is a must read for any aspiring or current teacher who wants to think critically about how to teach U.S. history and make historical discussions come alive in the school classrooms where the nation's students learn.
Teaching History and Social Studies to English Language Learners by
This book investigates the preparation of secondary history and social studies (SS) teachers to teach English language learners (ELLs) in twenty-first century classrooms. This edited collection focuses on the ways in which pre-service and in-service teachers have developed - or may develop - instructional effectiveness for working with ELLs in the secondary history and social studies classroom. The authors address a variety of standards and content examples, including the National Council for Social Studies C3 Framework and Curriculum Standards, the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, and content from history, geography, and civics. This volume is part of a set of four edited books focused on teaching the key content areas to English language learners.
Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories in International Contexts by
Grounded in a critical sociocultural approach, this volume examines issues associated with teaching and learning difficult histories in international contexts. Defined as representations of past violence and oppression, difficult histories are contested and can evoke emotional, often painful, responses in the present. Teaching and learning these histories is contentious yet necessary for increased dialogue within conflict-ridden societies, reconciliation in post-conflict societies, and greater social cohesion in long-standing democratic nations. Focusing on locations and populations across the globe, chapter authors investigate how key themes--including culture, identity, collective memory, emotion, and multi-perspectivity, historical consciousness, distance, and amnesia--inform the teaching and learning of difficult histories.
American Decades: Primary Documents by
American Decades Primary Sources is a 10-volume set spanning the 20th century. As a companion to Gales popular American Decades series or as a stand-alone, American Decades Primary Sources provides fresh insight into the decades most important events, people, and issues. Each volume of American Decades Primary Sources includes approximately 200 full or excerpted primary sources in 160-170 entries from the period representing a diversity of views that provide insight into the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from the decade. Also included are concise contextual information, notes about the author, further resources, and more than 250 photos and illustrations. Patterned after the popular American Decades series, each American Decades Primary Sources volume includes chapters on the arts, medicine and health, media, education, world events, religion, government and politics, lifestyles and social trends, law and justice, religion, business and the economy, and sports. Included to provide unique perspectives and a wealth of understanding are: Oral histories Songs Speeches Advertisements TV, play and movie scripts Letters Laws Legal decisions Newspaper articles Cartoons Recipes And much more
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.
