Group items tagged

This site hosted by the Library of Virginia contains a number of transcriptions of primary documents. The documents (most of which are excerpts from larger texts) are related to Virginia and are organized for time period, for example "A Nation in the Making" or "Virginia and the New South". This site would be useful in a number of American History Units as it contains texts from before the Revolution as well as from the Civil War.

This site is presented by the Virginia Center for Digital History and the University of Virginia Library. It showcases two communities during the Civil War. One count was in the north, and one was in the south. It provides an interesting case study of life on both sides of the war. Students and teachers can use this site to compare maps, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, speeches and records in both communities. It also organizes the war into three eras: the eve of war, the war years, and the aftermath.

The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and "the Virginia experiment."

This is a primary source document . . . in Spanish! It is purported to be (as I'm no hispanohablante) a letter from 1570 that "describes the settlement at Ajacàn and requests that Juan de Hinistrosa, the Royal Treasurer of Cuba, send a ship of grain to sustain the settlement." This would be great for Spanish class, obviously, and then maybe for world history after the other students translate it. :-)

This site contains actual documents from the trials in Salem Village in 1692.  I searched for this site because I once taught The Crucible and think that students would enjoy seeing the court documents that they read about in the story.

An incredible number of primary sources can be found on this site regarding our first president. I was impressed with the "Educational Resources" that take some primary sources and scaffold teachers' use of them with students in grades 3-5 and middle/high school.

This site offers readers a chance to hear the voices of people the history textbooks have traditionally left out. Interviews done in the 1930's with former slaves are transcribed on this site, some with photographs of the former slave included. The transcripts are difficult to read because of dialect, racial slurs, and some troubling content. With teacher assistance, though, I think these transcripts could help students better understand life for slaves in our country's history.

This site provides first-person accounts from former slaves. I have actually used this site in American Literature to show students what slaves went through. It gives them a voice and students have really connected with the slaves' stories. Students can find lots of material about slavery, but the first-person accounts make it much more personal.

This site provides primary documents with their transcriptions surrounding the Salem Witch Trials. Included are images of court records, books, and personal letters. The images can be made larger, and while students would not be able to read most of the document, the image brings life to the source. Having the transcription so that students can read what was actually said is powerful. Middle school and high school students would find the information fascinating. It would partner well with social studies and literature.