The Homestead Act and a Research Prompt
Last Friday the document of the day on the Today’s Document from the National Archives blog was a copy of the Homestead Act passed on May 20, 1862. Seeing the document reminded me of a prompt that I used in a workshop about teaching search strategies that I hosted last summer. If you teach U.S. […]
15 New Primary Source Activities from DocsTeach
DocsTeach has been one of my go-to places for U.S. History lessons since the day that I first discovered it years ago. Not only does DocsTeach host a large, curated collection of primary source documents it also offers templates for developing online activities about those documents. Additionally, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary source lesson […]
New Map-based History Lessons from DocsTeach
DocsTeach is one of my go-to resources for history teachers. I like it so much that I feature it in my Teaching History With Technology course. DocsTeach provides thousands of primary sources that teachers can use to build online and in-person history lessons for middle school and high school students. Additionally, DocsTeach hosts hundreds of pre-made […]
Fifteen New Primary Source-based Lessons from Docs Teach
DocsTeach has been one of my go-to resources for U.S. History lessons for many years. DocsTeach offers more than 1,500 primary source activities to use in elementary, middle, and high school history lessons. Additionally, DocsTeach provides tools for creating your own online lessons using primary sources from the National Archives of the United States. This […]
Using DocsTeach to Create Online Lessons – Free Webinar Next Week
DocsTeach is a favorite resource of mine for U.S. History teachers and students. I used it and it’s predecessor fairly regularly when I was teaching U.S. History. DocsTeach provides an online space where you can create primary source based lessons for your students to complete online or offline. Last fall I published a detailed tutorial […]
How to Find Historical Comics and Create Lessons With Them
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Docs Teach that featured the idea of creating history lessons that incorporate historical comics. That email sent me to Docs Teach where there is a small collection of historical comics. Since Docs Teach is a project of the U.S. National Archives all of the comics […]
How to Find and Create Primary Source Lessons With DocsTeach
DocsTeach has been one of my go-to tools for social studies teachers for many years. Despite that recommendation I’ve never made a video on how it works, until now. DocsTeach is a free service offered by the National Archives through which you can find primary source lesson activities and create your own activities by using […]
My Top 5 Tools for Social Studies Teachers and Students (Non-Google Edition)
Earlier this week I published my top five Google tools for social studies teachers and students. Recognizing that not everyone wants to use or has access to G Suite for Education accounts, here are my top five non-Google tools for social studies teachers and students. I didn’t include my all-time favorite timeline tool, Timeline JS […]
Dozens of Constitution Day Activities and Resources
Next Tuesday is Constitution Day in the United States. According to federal law all schools that receive federal funding have to teach some type of lesson about the Constitution on this day. C-SPAN, DocsTeach, and the National Constitution Center all offer either lesson plans or resources for building your own Constitution Day lesson plans. 25 […]
DocsTeach Adds New Documents and Lessons About Suffrage
Earlier this week the Library of Congress launched a new crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe more than 20,000 primary source documents related to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The LOC isn’t the only organization to make primary sources related to suffrage available online. DocsTeach, produced by the National Archives, has a Women’s Rights […]
DocsTeach Adds Good Artifacts for Teaching About the Transcontinental Railroad
DocsTeach has long been one of my go-to recommendations for teachers of U.S. History. DocsTeach provides a wealth of digitized primary source artifacts that can be incorporated into lessons for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. You can search for those artifacts according to era in U.S. History, according to artifact type (text, […]
A New LOC Online Collection – Theodore Roosevelt’s Papers
I have always found Theodore Roosevelt to be one of the most fascinating characters in U.S. History. That is why I was excited this morning when I saw an email from the Library of Congress announcing the online publication of Theodore Roosevelt’s papers. The LOC’s collection of Theodore Roosevelt’s papers is divided into sixteen sections. […]
New Artifact Collections Added to DocsTeach
DocsTeach is one of my go-to recommendations for anyone who teaches U.S. History at a middle school or high school level. The site offers a dozen tools that you can use to create interactive history lessons based on primary and secondary sources. To help you build those lessons DocsTeach provides thousands of primary and secondary […]
Find the Features of Digital Vaults in DocsTeach
The U.S. National Archives used to have a great feature called the National Archives Digital Vaults. The Digital Vaults site offered great tools for teaching with primary sources from the National Archives. One of the aspects that I particularly liked was called “pathways challenges” which allowed students to see the connections between events and primary […]
51 Resources for Constitution Day
This coming Sunday is Constitution Day in the United States. That means that schools have to include some type of lesson related to the Constitution either today or Monday. Last week I shared a few resources for Constitution Day lessons. If you’re still looking for some Constitution Day resources, take a look at the collection […]
DocsTeach Adds New Analysis Activities for Students
DocsTeach is a great resource for teachers of U.S. History. DocsTeach, produced by the National Archives Foundation, provides teachers with a free platform on which they can create online history lessons based on images, documents, audio recording, video recordings, and maps. The lessons that teachers create can be shared with their students through a free […]