This site talks about the causes of the Civil War and has letters, memoirs and diaries of people that lived through the Civil War. It would give kids a better feeling about how people felt at the time the war was going on.
This cite shares differing points of views during the civil war. This site includes letters to and from family members, soldiers, slaves, women and children. It would be interesting to compare the letters to the social studies books kids use in class.
The Smithsonian has webpages for students, families, and teachers. The student site has primary sources in the format of pictures and video footage. They are called IdeaLabs on this site. The IdealLab I found interesting was the Walk on the Moon. It included a video footage from the Apollo landing on the moon and President Kennedy's address to the nation.
This website organizes some of the Smithsonian Institution's vast resources into four topics for students to explore: art, science, history and people/places. There are incredible virtual tours, online interactive labs, games and activities. The site has an educator's section with lesson plans and a search feature to find resources by keyword, grade, and subject.
Explore art, science, history, and people like never before. If you teach the solar system, plate tectonics, volcanoes, or rocks and minerals the Dynamic Earth site is for you. I was so impressed being able to go online and zoom in on hundreds of different rocks, minerals, and gems. Fascinating!
War rations is a concept that is difficult for students to understand. This site uses a painting of people shopping at a grocery store during WWII and makes it interactive. Visitors to the site can examine the picture and click on details to learn more about what is happening in the photo. For instance, it shows pictures and explainations of actual ration booklets, propaganda, posters, grocery prices, etc. There are also nice "Did you know" buttons to learn more and all the primary sources can be downloaded and printed as PDF's.
An excellent child friendly website for the student of Native Americans. Included on the site are links to many tribes, their legends, treaties and agreements.
This is the web site for FDA's campaign to help people become aware of the Nutrition Facts Label on food products. There are games, projects and specialized pages for children, parents and educators.
This fascinating site is filled with information about spies during the America Revolution. Users can explore the letters of spies (both in their original format and a transcribed version) and their stories and techniques. In addition, the site offers a timeline, more information about people of the revolution, and a teacher's lounge with activities and suggestions for using primary sources with all students.
This site draws from a number of collections (University of California Berkeley, The California Historical Society, and hosted by the Library of Congress). It includes photos, artwork, letters, diaries, and legal documents. The documents touch on the Immigration experience for people coming to the West Coast from China as well as document many of the contributions made by Chinese Immigrants.
This site is joint venture between the U.S. Institute of Museum & Library Services, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and National History Day. The site offers thousands of pages detailed eyewitness accounts from a number of different groups of people. The documents record the first encounters of the Native Americans and those coming into contact with them for the first time.
This is a great site for 4th grade teacher. CRT's are still taken in OPS for social studies and 4th grade has 3 big ones over Nebraska places and people of interest.
This site compiles the best primary resources that are available to help teach different American history events. The documents include: letters, speeches, books and articles from important people from the different eras of American history.
Some key primary sources regarding the Vietnam War are included on the site along with some helpful suggestions for teachers. There are quite a few interesting reflections on the war and information from "the trenches" included on this site as well.
This site would be extremely useful for history teachers when teaching about Vietnam. There are letters, maps, as well as first-person accounts from people who were in Vietnam.
This interesting site offering many documents regarding World War I. Official papers are included but there are also diaries and memorials of every day people. In addition, the site links to other helpful World War I sites.
To find original historical documents this is the site to visit. It contains the most famous Bill of Rights and US Constitution as well as famous letters such as one written by Elvis to President Nixon and speeches like the WWII Infamy speech given by FDR. Students viewing these actual documents will help bring reality to the people and events in history.
This page allows you to search historical newspaper articles throughout history. Students would love this site to research events throughout history by looking at these old newspapers.
This site offers newspaper pages from 1860 to 1992 from various states, including Nebraska. Seeing the front page headlines from a newspaper printed at the time of a historical event could give students a better understanding of how people living at that time viewed the event.
This site includes government documents maintained by the U.S. Department of State about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty around the world. These documents are part of the Diplomacy in Action webpage maintained by the U.S. Department of State. If you search out other links on this site, you will find a vast resource of information about countries around the world.
The World Factbook was produced for U.S. policy makers. The information is fairly easy to read and comprehend, therefore, students can use the documents, especially on the middle and secondary level. The World Factbook provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities. The government documents they have are maps of the major world regions, Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map.
Ben's guide is a gov doc that teaches about the US government. I accessed the section for 3-5 grades. This included information about historical documents, branches of the government and the election process. There is a glossary of terms and a list of other government websites. It is "narrated" by Ben Franklin
Resource to learn more about branches of government and the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Lincoln Public Schools - Social studies - 5th grade
* The Constitution became and is still the supreme law of the land
* The Constitution established separation of powers between the branches of government
* The Bill of Rights was added to protect individual freedoms (for some people)
This is the official site for the Ken Burns series on National Parks. Here you can watch clips of the series. There are sections on the history of national parks and the people often associated with the parks. There are lesson plans for upper grades for various episodes. There are also learning modules for digital story telling that I found very interesting.
This site would be a great resource when studying explorers. There are letters and journals written by explorers that students can read that date further back than Christopher Columbus. The articles might give the reader a better idea of how the people were feeling while they were on these explorations.
Thousands of narrative excerpts giving first person accounts of slavery and the individuals it affected. These are accounts of the cruelty and plantation life. There are also hundreds of photos of former slaves.
This site contains narratives of past slaves that were created in the late 1930's. This site, which is a part of the Library of Congress, provides excellent primary sources that respresent a group of people whose voice was often not heard. Teachers and students could use this site when studying the Civil War and slavery, the Civil Rights movement, writing using dialect, to partner with an historical fiction novel that touches on the subject of slavery, and more.