Teaching US History - United States History Teaching Resources
Education > Teaching History > U.S.
American Centuries...view from New England
"...features a digital collection of approximately 1,800 objects and transcribed document pages from Memorial Hall Museum and Library...One section of the American Centuries site is an interactive exhibit that focusses [sic] on three past 'turns of the centuries'ó1700, 1800 and 1900...This site includes an array of classroom lessons on the elementary, middle, and secondary levels written and tested by classroom teachers under the direction of curriculum specialists."
Sections include: Digital Collection ; Turns Exhibit ; Activities ; In The Classroom ; Chronology ; My Collection ; People & Places.
- Memorial Hall Museum, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association
American Journeys
Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement: A Digital Library and Learning Center
"American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
American Memory
Historical Collections for the National Digital Library
The Library of Congress
American Memory Timeline Home Page
"This resource was developed to help teachers and students use the vast online collections of the Library of Congress. The links to the right will lead you to sets of selected primary sources on a variety of topics in United States History. The sets are arranged by chronological period."
Learning Page, American Memory, Library of Congress
A Biography of America
"...is a telecourse and video series that presents American history as a living narrative. This series web site lets you delve further into the topics of the 26 video programs...For each program you'll find an interactive feature related to the subject or the time period of the program. In addition, you'll find a listing of key events of the period, a map relevant to the period, the transcript of the video program, and a "Webography" - a set of annotated web links. You will most likely want to watch the video program before using its related web segments, but you can use either independently."
Produced by WGBH Interactive for Annenberg/CPB.
Birth of the Nation: The First Federal Congress, 1789-1791
"This online exhibit recreates an exhibit which opened in the United States Court House in Manhattan in 1989...This exhibit provides an overview of the work of and issues faced by this seminal Congress, which was a virtual second sitting of the Federal Convention, fleshing out the governmental structure outlined in the Constitution and addressing the difficult issues left unresolved by the Constitution. Each "topic" begins with a quote from the Constitution relating to it. The illustrations (letters, newspaper articles, cartoons, portraits, etc.) for the topics provide just a sampling of the. wealth of material in the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791...It is our hope that the exhibit will prove useful, particularly to students and their teachers. Towards that end, we intend to produce an online teacher's guide for the exhibit."
California Newsreel
"...a non-profit film distribution organization that specializes in films from Africa and the African Diaspora. It is one of the oldest and most notable independent media distributors in the US
Our Library of African Cinema has a diverse collection of films from throughout the African continent; they are thematically focused on issues such as post-colonial conflict, gender relations, economic development, health, human rights and cultural life. The majority of the films are made by African producers and directors. By providing historical and cultural contexts for all its titles, the 64-page Library of African Cinema catalog also serves as a resource guide for those with an interest in African representation on film and video.
California Newsreel's African American Perspectives series covers a range of subjects from American slavery to post-colonial theory, including African American cultural life, history, and literature. Its 50 titles comprise the country's most-comprehensive collection of distinguished and critically acclaimed documentaries on the black experience."
Civil War - See our separate U.S. Civil War Education section.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
"The Institute maintains this website to serve as a portal for American history on the Web; to offer high-quality educational material for teachers, students, historians, and the public; and to provide up-to-the-minute information about the Institute's programs and activities.
H-Net Teaching
"This site is intended to serve as a gateway to H-Net's extensive collection of teaching resources including teaching focused discussion networks, syllabi, links, conference papers on multimedia teaching, and web-based teaching projects."
H-Net Teaching
"This site is intended to serve as a gateway to H-Net's extensive collection of teaching resources including teaching focused discussion networks, syllabi, links, conference papers on multimedia teaching, and web-based teaching projects."
Historians Against the War
Statement: "We historians call for a halt to the march towards war against Iraq. We are deeply concerned about the needless destruction of human life, the undermining of constitutional government in the U.S., the egregious curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad, and the obstruction of world peace for the indefinite future."
Historical New York Times Project
"The Historical New York Times Project is the first of a series of projects undertaken by the Universal Library at Carnegie Mellon University, to provide everyone with a glimpse into the actual events as they were seen by the people of the day. You will see the rich tapestry of lives, so like ours today, in which now famous events were actually understood, and misunderstood...What we present is not for the historian, who has access to the microfilms and who has the time to study them, but for the general public, worldwide."
History Matters
The U.S. Survey on the Web
"Designed for high school and college teachers on U.S. History courses. This site serves as a gateway to Web resources and offers useful materials for teaching U.S. history...We emphasize materials that focus on the lives of ordinary Americans and actively involve students in analyzing and interpreting evidence."
Learning Page
"The Learning Page is a web site designed to help teachers, students, and life-long learners use the American Memory digital collections from the Library of Congress. The site provides guidance to finding and using items within these primary source collections....If you're curious about the collections in American Memory and want to know more, some good starting points are Search Help and Feature Presentations. You can also Learn More about individual collections....If you're a student, check out the Activities and what's New to begin your exploration of American history...If you're a teacher, take a look at Educators' Programs and Lesson Ideas to find possibilities for using primary source materials in your classroom."
- American Memory Project, Library of Congress
Lewis & Clark as Naturalists
"This site has been designed to be particularly useful for elementary, middle and high school education and includes a Teachers' Guide and several lesson plans, but the content should be interesting and informative to the general public, whether in North America or abroad...The site contains images of museum specimens, scientific drawings, and field photos of the plant and animal species observed and described by Lewis and Clark, along with journal excerpts, historical notes, and references for many of these examples as well as the date and location of observation."
- National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
See also our Lewis & Clark page
Little House in the Census: Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder
"This site from the US Census Bureau is another recent example of its ongoing effort to raise civic consciousness concerning the history and value of the decennial headcount. The site asks students to examine online documents from the 1880 and 1900 census to track the geographic and, to some extent, personal changes in the Wilder family. Questions encourage students to use critical thinking to explain discrepancies in census data as well as to consider the sort of historical hypotheses that might be drawn from the data and commentary in the Census. The materials offered are thoughtful, but somewhat sketchy, so teachers will probably want to work out the instructional details themselves before presenting the site to students. [DC]"
Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies
"...interprets the collective knowledge of the Smithsonian and serves as a gateway to its educational resources. Through research, publishing, and staff development programs for the education and museum communities, the Center promotes the understanding and use of museums.
Visions In the Dust: A Child's Perspective of the Dust Bowl [Grades 6-8]
"This unit helps students gain an understanding of Dust Bowl history through the eyes of a child. Using Karen Hesseís Newbery Award-winning Out of the Dust as an introduction to this aspect of the Great Depression, students have the opportunity to identify with the personal experiences of youth in the 1930s. In addition, students examine primary source materials of the period to correlate the fictional text with actual visual, auditory, and manuscript accounts as found in the American Memory collections.
American Memory, The Learning Page - Lessons, Library of Congress
Virtual Jamestown
This well designed online resource includes: Maps and Images ; Court Records ; Labor Contracts ; Public Records ; Reference Center ; First Hand Accounts and Letters ; Newspapers ; Teaching Materials.
"...product of collaboration between Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia."
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