Historical Scene Investigations – A Great Way to Get Students to Use Primary Sources
Historical Scene Investigation is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. I’ve used it and referred people to it for years. HSI presents students with historical cases to “crack” through the use of evidence found in the form of primary source documents. Historical Scene Investigation contains thirteen cases in which students […]
64 Years of Presidential Campaign Commercials – A Lesson Plan
In a little more than one year from now we’ll be casting ballots for President of the United States. That means for the next year we’ll see campaign commercials online and on television. Campaign commercials have changed a lot in the last 60+ years. That’s evident in a C-SPAN Classroom lesson plan titled Evaluating Historical […]
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, […]
Teaching the Constitution With Political Cartoons – Webinar Recording
DocsTeach is one of my favorite tools for building history lessons centered around primary source documents, pictures, maps, and drawings. DocsTeach contains an integrated search tool for finding artifacts from the U.S. National Archives. You can use that search tool to find political cartoons. That was focus of a recent professional development webinar that was […]
How Inventions Change History
This evening I was looking back at some resources that I have for teaching about Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Included in that list was a YouTube video that demonstrated how the cotton gin worked. Next to that video I found a TED-Ed lesson titled How Inventions Change History (For Better or Worse). The […]
Nixon’s Visit to China – Documents and Video
Last week the National Archives Today’s Document feed featured two artifacts from President Nixon’s landmark visit to China in 1972. The first document was actually a photography of Air Force One arriving in China. The second document was the menu from one of the dinners in Peking. Looking at these documents reminded me of some […]
Analyzing Word Choice in a Presidential Statement
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on this day in 1963. Later in the same day Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States. President Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One. When the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base he gave a short statement. His speech card […]