Archives: Resources

The Chicago History Museum hosts an extensive collection of classroom resources covering curriculum for grades 1 through 12. The site includes both online and downloadable activities. Lesson plans … learn more

A list of the over 200 on-line collections maintained by the Library of Congress. You and your students can view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; … learn more

New content is added regularly to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website, including online exhibitions, videos, lesson plans, and issues of the online journal History Now, … learn more

Lyrical Legacy helps teachers explore eighteen American songs and poems from the digital collections of the Library of Congress. Each song and poem is represented by an original … learn more

Historical Thinking Matters is a collaboration between the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and Stanford University’s History Education group. The resources can be … learn more

The Digital History Reader is a content- and inquiry-based for teaching European and American history with illustrative, multi-media downloads.

This website connects Annenberg’s award-winning, comprehensive curriculum on the Constitution and its amendments to daily civics news and student discussion. Their nonpartisan writers sift through national and local … learn more

Main Menus British History American History Germany History Russian History French History First World War Second World War Spanish Civil War Cold War Vietnam War Assassination of John … learn more

Our Documents is a collaboration among many archive agencies to provide wider access to key U.S. History expressions of turning points. Often, texts include excerpts of these primary … learn more

Famous Trials looks at everything from the trial of Socrates (399 B.C.) to Susan B. Anthony (1873) to the Nuremberg Trials (1945-49)and the recent Zimmerman (“Trayvon Shooting”) Trial … learn more

The official site for the U.S. Supreme Court includes slip opinions that are released on the day that a case is decided, volumes of all of the Court’s … learn more

NARA, the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration,now called just Archives, has just begun to display its holdings, almost all of which cannot be found elsewhere. For starters … learn more

Calisphere is the University of California’s free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 200,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, … learn more

Includes photos and art, literature and historical documents about the Great Depression.

Offers representative photos for students to replicate the work of historians by sifting and comparing photos for the history of the U.S. between 1880 and 1920. EDC has … learn more

Both the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and Dorthea Lange document American life during the Great Depression. The photographers used black and white so their work is … learn more

Geography and maps are a fundamental language for understanding the world. They provide a framework for organizing and communicating our knowledge. Increasingly geography is used in virtually every … learn more

The goal of Confluence is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures, … learn more

With the advent of the smart phone, just about everyone now has access to a high quality GPS receiver. There are a wide variety of GPS apps available … learn more

This site has digitized one of the greatest historical atlases, Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published … learn more

This is the link to the GeoCaching site. You can do something similar in your own school or neighborhood by creating caches and providing directions. A great way … learn more

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, … learn more

GPS uses trilateration, not triangulation, to figure out where you are. The actual math is complex, but this video shows how GPS uses three satellites to sort out … learn more

The CIA World Factbook includes maps of each country in the world as well as high resolution regional and global reference maps. Then entry for each country includes … learn more

When looking for interesting geography facts, World Geography For Kids found some really fun continent facts and interesting facts about the world’s countries and people. See how many … learn more

This Discovery News segment from 2013 describes the GPS network, where it came from, how it works, and how it it being upgraded with a new generation of … learn more

National Geographic’s Interactive Map Maker includes topo, satellite, terrain, and ocean maps. You can layer on data values and save the results.

The entire history of the World from the rise of civilization to the present day. There are a number of takeaways from this compelling video… . While humans … learn more

Telling Their Stories describes the construction of an oral history. This method can be especially interesting for students learning from the elderly about their families, because some older … learn more

For a view of the future in past predictions look at Davids Zondy site and thenn change your own forecasts.

Travel back to the 1800s and become an eyewitness to history. You become a young slave who must make some important and life-changing decisions. These lesson plans and … learn more

The National Historical Society recommends HistoryNet as a more traditional source than the WallofHonor.

For Jewish American history look at this American Jewish Archives page, mapping the entire span of years during which Jews have lived in North America.

To learn about where the immigrants lived after they were cleared at Ellis Island, take a look at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. If nothing else, the … learn more

The Wall of Honor commemorates families who came here by ship, by plane, and by foot; honors those who endured forced migration from slavery; and remembers our own … learn more

This site makes the 25 million arrival records and over 900 ships of passage pictures in the Ellis Island Archives available to everyone. Search using your students names … learn more

On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. National Geographic has assembled a set of maps and text showing the full scope of Japan’s battle plans for … learn more

The year is 1909 and your family has made a monumental decision that will change the rest of your life.Can you imagine your future as you set out to leave … learn more

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 … learn more

Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy and on July 20th, 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. Buzz Aldrin was the second … learn more

The Center for Educational Telecommunications has in-gathered a variety of media about the history, culture and current life of Asian peoples to the U.S. You will find Chinese, … learn more

Portsmouth’s D-Day Museum is Britain’s only museum dedicated solely to covering all aspects of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944. Currently going thru a … learn more

The Peabody Museum hosts a number of on-line exhibitions, including ones on how students lived at colonial Harvard, how 1870s photographs of Japanese people and scenes – created … learn more

This resource is maintained by the FDR Presidential Library & Museum. Includes New Deal Art, the Wagner Act, facts & figures about the Great Depression and a Student … learn more

While much of the content of the Mariner site in Newport News, Virginia, is about the physical museum itself, it also offers interesting links to the world’s explorers … learn more

The Japanese American National Museum can be used to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience.

At the San Francisco Museum’s Gold Rush exhibit are artifacts and letters of advice from the miners’ wives.

The National Cowboy Museum displays Western Heritage topics, such as the stagecoach—a fun site for upper elementary and middle school.

This site is an Oral History of Rhode Island Women during World War II, compiled by students in the Honors English Program at South Kingstown High School in … learn more

Digital History, from the University of Huston, provides a very rich and in-depth look at American History. You can search by era, topic or resource type. Resources include … learn more

Today, blogs are a populist way of encouraging democracy, because they can be set up by anyone. Speaking of History is an example. Certainly, students can encounter odd … learn more

The site asks student to consider how life would change without some of our most cherished freedoms. Includes videos, an instructor area, and lesson plans.

NOVA’s Saving the National Treasures has launched a site to illustrate the efforts at preserving the PHYSICAL documents of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of … learn more

This site from the Department of Education is designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom. Broken out … learn more

VoteSmart is a useful research tool. You can enter in a zip code or name and get information on your national, state and even local politicians (scroll to … learn more

When immigrants want to become Americans, they must take a civics test as part of their naturalization interview before a Citizenship and Immigration Services (INS) officer. The questions … learn more

The Electoral Vote Predictor can be used in a number of ways. The website tracks state-by-state polls for President and Senators, and presents the results in map, spreadsheet, … learn more

NewsOne has also assembled a collection if Black History month resources. Some of the pictures on this page are a hard to see, and should probably be limited … learn more

Oh Freedom! is an interdisciplinary resource from the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. It helps K–12 teachers and students discover the history, influence, and legacy of the Civil Rights … learn more

Patchwork indexes a number of other resources including treasure hunts, webquests, sample activities and more.

In the summer of 1964, over forty Freedom Schools opened in Mississippi. These schools were part of Freedom Summer, a project of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, with … learn more

Each year in the United States, February is dedicated as Black History Month. What began as the grassroots effort of African-American historian Carter G. Woodson has grown into … learn more

BuzzFeed News has assembled 50 high resolution images showing Black History in America from before the Civil War to the present. Highly recommended.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as … learn more

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial … learn more

The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship showcases the African American collections of the Library of Congress, with more than 240 items, including books, government documents, … learn more

Alexis de Tocqueville’s remarkable insights about the U.S. which have endured for more than a century have been recorded with a contemporary tour of the places he and … learn more

A&E’s Biography Channel resources have been placed in digital format — look at this database of more than 25,000 persons.

Writing a personal biography (autobiography?) shows what it takes to compile such a document and how every biography is an edited version of the person’s life. An autobiography … learn more

This resource from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science is an online archive of first-person stories (autobiographies) by and about Chicano/Hispanic and Native … learn more

Achievement is intended as an inspirational site – a few good people – with vignettes about and attributes of heroes.

Biographies.net is a huge collection of biographies about famous and not-so-famous individuals, including facts, birthday information, life story, profession, family and more – collaboratively assembled by contributing editors. … learn more

Odyssey takes you back to a dig in Egypt. You may encounter a hermit or a sandstorm or be invited to name the scholars’ truck. You can almost … learn more

Learning Sites has created virtual worlds by reconstructing major archaeological sites in 3Dimensions. The discussion questions for students are very well-done and veer towards sound analyses of the … learn more

How did salt & pepper end up becoming the primary seasonings on everyone’s table? This video looks at the historical as well as the chemical reasons that salt … learn more

This short video talks about how the study of garbage piles — or middens as archaeologists call them — paints the true picture of how we live. A … learn more

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features a set of primary documents designed for … learn more

Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has different categories with essays, primary sources, videos, audio recordings and tools, representing different points-of-view.

Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to Southern history, literature, and culture. Currently, … learn more

A wonderful audio collection of Native American folklore has been released – original music from the Omaha Indian tribal archives. Hosted by the American Memory Project at the … learn more

Welcome to The Moonlit Road.com, where we tell Southern ghost stories, folktales, myths and legends from the dark backroads of the American South. Want to come along? Follow the … learn more

The History Channel offers a wide range of resources and videos. One area of special interest is the Famous Speeches page, with audio clips on everything from Amelia … learn more

In 1946, one year after the end of World War 2 in Europe, Dr. David P. Boder traveled to Europe to record stories of Holocaust survivors in their … learn more

Remember.org is one of the more comprehensive sites which explores the context for the Holocaust. Over a half century has passed since the ending of this actual era … learn more

Footage from Movietone News and other sources portrays real time events from the past. It could encourage students to create their own productions online.

Archive.org, our webmasters favorite tool for tracking down web sites, also archives over 2,500 Old Time Radio shows. Not only can these programs be fun to listen to, … learn more

Pond5 sponsors this site allowing you and your students to download thousands of historic media files. The resources include video, audio, images and 3D models.  Stock up on … learn more

Oyez is a multimedia archive making the Supreme Court of the United States accessible to everyone. It is a complete and authoritative source for all of the Court’s … learn more

Combining theory and best practices, Gryphon House’s award-winning authors have developed practical advice and effective teaching strategies for early childhood development. Our educator resources focus on a wide … learn more

Best poems by famous poets all around the world on Poem Hunter. Read poem and quotes from most popular poets.

A Guide to the World of Shel Silverstein for parents, educators, librarians – create a Shelebration moment with young readers. Whether you’re reading Shel Silverstein’s poems with your … learn more

Explore the world of children’s literature KidLit TV is a winner of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award and has been selected as an American Association of School Librarians … learn more

NASA Earth Observations (NEO), One of the best places to study Earth is from space. NASA satellites continually orbit the globe, collecting information about Earth’s ocean, atmosphere, and … learn more

Geographer Peter Claggett with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) show how the population of the the Chesapeake Bay has grown using satellite imagery and talks about what people … learn more

The U.S. Census Bureau has a series of maps that lets you do things like visualize population growth by county, learn about Rural America, and track current emergencies … learn more

An interesting page is the “POPClock” from the U.S. Census Bureau. As soon as the site is entered, a population ticker is activated; it just keeps going and … learn more

Our World in Data breaks out population growth and future projections by country, age and more. Includes a wide range of graphs, maps, and data sources for further … learn more

Learning Goals This is a simulation tool for explaining numerous demographic terms including mortality rate,life expectancy, fertility rate, infant mortality, and the sex ratio. The simulator could also … learn more

The United States is a big place and it’s hard to have a feeling for where all of the people live. There are hundreds of millions of people … learn more