Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Learning Lab: Teaching With Primary Sources
Five lesson plans, complete with videos, primary sources, and document-based questions (DBQ) to encourage students to utilize primary sources and incorporate thinking and writing into daily learning. Topics include: Artifact &...
Virginia Historical Society
Virginia Museum of History and Culture: Teaching With Photographs
"Teaching with Photographs" includes images from the Virginia Historical Society's collection. The images are organized into several themes which allows this source to be used by younger and older grades. Resources for teachers are...
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian: Engaging Students With Primary Sources
This reference guide is designed to highlight the benefits of using primary source materials in any classroom and to provide the teacher with practical suggestions and examples of how to do this. It includes a bibliography and links to...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Teaching History: Doing History Is Like Solving a Mystery!
Use this interactive poster to explore how students understand history and find resources about teaching historical thinking to students.
The Newberry Library
Newberry Library: Art of Conflict: Portraying American Indians, 1850 to 1900
Lesson uses digitized primary source material to examine the portrayal of American Indians in art between 1850 and 1900. Classroom activities and questions for discussion included.
Other
Livius: Herodotus of Halicarnassus
Rich site provides a biography of Herodotus as well as a discussion of his sources and originality. Contains exhaustive material concerning the "world's first historian." Highlights include a study that explores how Herodotus described...
British Library
British Library: 19th Century Non Fiction Texts: Education
This thematic collection will allow students to read and understand 19th-century non-fiction texts, and support them in identifying key features for a range of genres, audiences, and purposes. Each source is accompanied by original...
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: Totalitarianism in Stalinist Russia
A module where students analyze how the author uses text structure to emphasize key points or explanations in order to achieve the purpose for writing or point of view.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Material Culture: Images
Investigate the meaning of different cultures' images and materials. Learn to examine different questions such as what is the image, what is the meaning, what is the function, and what is the social condition.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Personal Accounts
Discover how journals, memoirs, diaries, and autobiographies are important historical sources. Learn how historians use these personal accounts and get other questions answered.
George Mason University
Chnm: Children & Youth History
"Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present."
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Evaluating Eyewitness Reports
In this lesson, students practice working with primary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.
Library of Congress
Loc: Creating a Primary Source Archive: All History Is Local
A lesson plan where students collect local primary documents and examine the interplay between national, state, local, and personal history.
George Mason University
George Mason University: Imaging the French Revolution
A scholarly presentation of the French Revolution that is organized in three ways. The essays analyze images from this civil war. The discussions look at various interpretations, historians' methodologies, and at what effects digital...
Digital History
Digital History: An Intro to the Study of History: The Four Questions [Pdf]
How does one study history? Find four basic questions that historians use to examine events in an effort to explain them and put them in historical context. By examining the Battle of Lexington and Concord, students can practice using...
Library of Congress
Loc: Oral History and Social History
This instructional activity presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the collection, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project,...
Library of Congress
Loc: Change in Early 20th Century America: Doing the Decades
This unit provides a flexible investigative structure for the study of selected themes in U.S. history and culture using the American Memory collections and related resources. Core goals are the development of relationships between...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Power Notes
Power Notes is a strategy that teaches students an efficient form of organizing information from assigned text. This technique provides students a systematic way to look for relationships within material they are reading. Power Notes...
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Literacy Practices Interview
Literacy practices interviews are informal assessments that elicit information on students' reading and writing activities, including their free-time reading habits, their access to books, and their attitudes toward reading and writing....
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Content Area Literacy: History
The ability to read historical documents including contemporary explications about societal, economic and political issues provides a direct link to literacy as preparation for citizenship. As in the other disciplines, schools are unique...
Writing Fix
Writing Fix: Memories Sorted on a Timeline
This is a book review for Marley and Me by John Grogan in which he details events, both good and bad, in his life with his dog Marley. The activity focuses on having students remember and write down experiences in their lives (both good...
Cynthia J. O'Hora
Mrs. O's House: History Facts and Fictions
There are many versions of historical events, people, and places. This PBL offers an opportunity to students to actively explore a disputed event or urban myth to decide which version they will argue in favor of with supporting evidence.
Cynthia J. O'Hora
Mrs. O's House: Mystery Object Challenge
With a brief story and photo of an image, students will do some digging to figure out how old the object pictured is and the history behind it.
E Reading Worksheets
E Reading Worksheets: Patterns of Organization: Compare and Contrast
This learning module provides an explanation of the compare and contrast text structure. An explanation of the compare and contrast text structure is provided, and the compare and contrast text structure is demonstrated in a video...