I think that primary sources could be really neat to tie into social studies lessons. For instance, you could use a journal entry recounting an event from someone as a primary source, and then learn about that event and have students write what it would be like if they lived through that event. To tie in culturally relevant pedagogy, I think it would be creative to use a journal entry from someone in history discussing a tradition or important part of their culture, and then students in the class can write their own journal entries about their own culture and an important tradition or aspect of it.
Educational information, activities and resources for educators, families, and students. Educational materials emphasize inquiry based learning with primary sources and museum collections. Smithsonian visit planning for educators, students and families.
This site is an incredible resource for a teacher involved in any discipline.
In this age of increasing cutbacks in school funding, it is rare for students to be able to take field trips to museums. Thus, it is more important than ever to take advantage of virtual field trips where students can be exposed to primary sources and museum collections without leaving the classroom.
This site has units and lesson plans on: Lewis and Clark preparing for the trip, politics, mapping, women, animals, language, trade and property, plants. There is a section on exploring and using primary and secondary sources.
I stumbled across this site when I was looking for different primary source documents and lesson. I thought it was extraordinary! I haven't played around TOO much with it yet, but from what I can tell when you get into it, and look at a document/photo, it creates a web to related topics in a nice little interface, making searching for them easy peasy (like I said from what I can tell so far). I was impressed with it. =)
From the site: Exploring the Digital Vaults is easy. You can browse through the hundreds of photographs, documents, and film clips and discover the connection between some of the National Archives' most treasured records. To use the media rich version of this site you will need to download the Adobe Flash 9 player.