2011Reference

Congress for Kids is designed for students to learn about American History and Government in an interactive way. Fifth graders focus on American Government, so this source fits right into their Social Studies standards. Students can learn about the branches of our government, citizenship, and elections. There is also a section of quizzes for students to test their knowledge of American Government.

"The Labyrinth provides free, organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies through a World Wide Web server at Georgetown University. The Labyrinth's easy-to-use menus and links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images on other servers around the world. Each user will be able to find an Ariadne's thread through the maze of information on the Web. This project not only provides an organizational structure for electronic resources in medieval studies, but also serves as a model for similar, collaborative projects in other fields of study. The Labyrinth project is open-ended and is designed to grow and change with new developments in technology and in medieval studies." http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/

I have used this web site with 9th grade honors world history students. They really enjoyed exploring the site. "Learn about the 1994 discovery of Paleolithic cave paintings in France and view photographs of the paintings." http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/

"The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is a collection of over 40,000 hours of spoken word recordings, dating back to 1888. The collection includes the voices of over 100,000 persons from all walks of life. Political and cultural leaders and minor players in the human drama are captured and cataloged to serve the research needs of a local, national and international user base. Clients include students and faculty of Michigan State University, other scholars and researchers, broadcasting networks, news agencies and film, video, and Web production companies. Access to Voice Library holdings is determined by copyright law. Most items held in the public domain are available for online listening as mp3 files. Look for the "Listen" button. Copies of many other items may be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan, via a public or university library. Some fees may apply." http://www.si.edu

"Advance freedom for the benefit of the American people and the international community by helping to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world composed of well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people, reduce widespread poverty, and act responsibly within the international system." --From the FY 2010 Agency Financial Report, released November 2010

Promotes "government information in order to engage K-12 students in learning about history, culture, science, and government through games and other interactive activities; to assist teachers and school librarians with locating teaching aids, lesson plans, and exciting tools to enhance students' learning, and to provide librarians with a collection of free government resources to advance their reference interview and collection development decisions." http://govdocs4children.pbworks.com/w/page/8811722/FrontPage

This is the teacher site of the Library of Congress. Here you can locate primary sources by topic sets, topic, state, and theme. You can also access their web guide which contains extensive online resources for teachers and students of individuals, events, eras, and historical documents. This site is also a portal to using, citing, teaching, and analyzing primary sources, finding classroom materials to match state standards, lesson plans, activities, news & events, professional development, FAQs, and additional resources, like slide shows and handouts from past Library of Congress events.

At this site you can find primary-source based activities for grades 1-12 already created or create you own for the teaching of history, historical comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Thousands of documents can also be found using the National History Standards categories.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence offers primary resources in a variety of subjects. These resources are not limited to history. There are resources for arts, heath, language arts, math, and science.

This site is a collection of 100 milestone documents that was compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration. The documents are from U.S. history from 1776 to 1965. This site has some great ideas and tips for teachers and librarians as well.

U.S. History Primary Sources for National History Day

This site teaches far more than history to our students. The photos, documents, and first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and World War II are presented in a way that encourages students to see others as people; not by color, nationality, ability, etc. This is an ideal way to give students primary material to improve their social/cultural literacy as well as emotional literacy. It is powerful and poignant, a site that could benefit any student, intermediate age and higher.

Students who are working their 4th grade research standard- Inventions unit would be able to find excellent primary sources in the links connected with famous inventors. Some famous inventors featured on this site are Alexander Graham Bell, Emiline Berliner, and Wilbur and Orville Wright.

I love the way this site is arranged by continents.  When doing research on countries with elementary students (3rd grade), they need information that is authentic, but also easy to grab.  One of our 3rd grade standards in Elkhorn is to learn the continents and land forms.  We expand this into a research project where each child chooses a country.  I believe 3rd grade students would be able to navigate this site.

The American Presidency Project has many documents of interest when researching our American presidents.  There are primary sources that may be of great value when studying a particular president at his time in history.  The conversations are invaluable because they give a completely true picture of what event was going on at the time.

5th graders learn about explorers in social studies and we do a research unit in media.  This site is very cool because it has actual documents that contain personal accounts by American explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers.  I love reading the actual words from these famous pioneers from long ago.  I think it gives kids something "real" to relate to when studying history.

This website is FULL of primary sources related completely to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. You can listen to his famous "I have a dream" speech as well as find bibliographical information about MLK, Jr.

This is the Simithsonian website. A person can search past, present and future exhibition displays. You can also search their encyclopedia as well as search their collections.

The Smithsonian Institution offers access to primary sources and other resources on a wide variety of topics, including military and political history. http://www.si.edu/

This site would be great for high school students! Students can research primary documents or they can look at online exhibits of various topics that have already been compiled. When looking at the exhibits, an explanation is given and then various photos and videos are shown. This is a great resource for primary documents!

This website would be great for upper elementary or even middle school when learning about different ways to recycle and also about things that are not good for the environment. There are teacher resources as well as a game where students get to be the new city manager and help clean up the town by picking up litter and recycling. By clicking on different parts of the town they learn about harful and beneficial items. Kids do need to be able to read well to play this game which is why I think it would be best for upper elementary.