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The MedlinePlus website would be very valuable for students in middle and high school grades doing research about diseases and health related topics. MedlinePlus provides health information and documents from the world's largest medical library, the National Library of Medicine. MedlinePlus is updated daily and has current reliable information on over 800 diseases and conditions. I especially found interesting the video footage of numerous actual surgeries narrated by doctors to treat major medical conditions.

This site is part of the Eisenhower Presidential Library. It would be extremely useful for civil rights units. This is a nice collection of some of Eisenhower's most important correspondence during the Little Rock High School integration crisis. It is also neat to read them because they are scans of the actual typed documents and not just transcriptions. It seems more authentic when students can see the real thing. His notes, diaries, telegrams, letters and press releases really help to show how Eisenhower handled the situation. (Note: There is even an exchange of letters between Jackie Robinson and the president in which they discuss how blacks need to be patient for civil rights)

What a great site to visit on President's Day. This site allows you to take a virtual tour of Presidential Libraries. Students will enjoy this unique opportunity to learn about the lives of our US Presidents and the important impacts they had on our country while serving in office.

This website is a portal for many other websites that would be very useful for teaching. I haven't looked at all of the links, but there are links to major websites like the Smithsonian and Library of Congress, both of which I know have primary documents available on them. Not all of these sites have government documents on them, but many of them do.

Site includes maps, pictures, thematic packets for teachers and more. Teachers are able to navagate throughout the site to access all aspects of history. Site also provides sources for professional training and outside resources. Site provides training on how to use primary sources.

Library of Congress Teachers Page, with links to using primary sources, etc. The LOC has created "Themed Resources" that include specific, common topics into easy to use sets. The combined resources include grouped primary source sets, lessson plans, exhibitions, etc. Love IT! Also provides user with pre-made LOC professional development sessions called "Teaching with Primary Sources."

This Library of Congress site would be fun to use as a bell work activity in upper elementary school. Each day a student could pick one event from "today in history" to share with the class. Informative with pictures!

Today in History is part of the Library of Congress' American Memory project. As the title implies, the site pulls a signicant event in history, reports about it and shows primary sources -- photos and documents -- attached to the event. The writers generally pick one or two topics for the day and elaborate on those. Excellent for upper grades.

The Harry S. Truman Library website has a plethora of primary sources in audio, video and government documents. The videos alone contain 500 films from 1934 to 1984, Many feature Truman in some way. Their online documents are organized by important topics. For instance, there is a collection of primary source/govt docs relating to the atomic bombings in Japan. One is even a letter from Einstein to Truman. These documents would be very useful in connection with the 8th grade Nebraska social studies curriculum, where they discuss WWII. The collection on Japanese Americans in WWII would also be great for the high school American History courses.

This site is a WEALTH of information on the history of the United States. It includes letters, documents, photos, audio and video that are all in the public domain (and there fore also legal to use) since they are all owned by the U.S. government. Using the search box will yield many results. My favorite search on this site is to find primary sources about the great depression. A search tip: be sure to click "gallery view" when you look at your search results. It helps you know what type of source you are looking at.

search: Oregon Trail first person accounts and maps that help to explain trails and settlements Lincoln Public - grade 4 - Social Studies * Major rivers and terrain determined trail paths and settlement sites * Motivation varied (Oregon = land, California = gold, Mormon = religious freedom)

There are some great sites at this source. Their topics run from Women's history to Native American history. There are even maps. This would be a big help for upper elementary to 12th grade.

This site includes material about famous Americans. This site would work for any reports about presidents, about authors, or about musicians. It would also be helpful when researching the various states. As an American Literature teacher I would use the site to have students research Langston Hughes, for instance. That would also be a great source for Black History Month.

This site is geared for children. It has famous people, places, hobbies, and different time periods to explore. This is a good site to share with kids because it is easy to understand and use as a research tool.

Looking for another great social studies website? Here it is. This site is sponsored by the Library of Congress and contains amazing stories of America's past. Students will be able to learn more about famous Americans, they can "Jump Back in Time" to read about important events that have taken place in history such as the Revolutionary War, WWII, Western Expansion, Colonial America and many, many more.

This site contains a wealth of resources for teachers. They have primary source sets that include teacher resource booklets and lesson plans. One of the sets I found useful was one on the Constitution that included newspaper articles and original documents that trace the drafting and adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This set would be useful for all grade levels for Constitution day materials in September. There was also an interesting primary source set on Thanksgiving that had paintings and photographs showing historical perspectives on American Thanksgiving traditions.

While the Library of Congress website is vast, I found the Classroom Resources section under the Teachers heading to be beneficial for my current position as a third grade classroom teacher; although many of the items I saw could be used at any elementary grade level. I found the Primary Sources by State and Immigration Challenges to be beneficial to my current unit in my district's SS program. The Thanksgiving link would be interesting for the students to see and discover things they didn't know before celebrating this holiday. I'll definitely use this site with my students, because it goes so well with what we're studying. Plus, it creates a more 'real' experience than their textbook allows.

Fabulous! As a former drama teacher, this site is a must for anyone wanting original documets from Shakespeare's plays. The site drills down further for each play, going to detailed documents that are related to the plays. Study guides, lesson plans. This is the definitive source for Shakespeare anything. There is nothing as complete and authoritative as the Folger library for Shakespeare information, whether student or teacher.

This site is maintained by Texas Woman's University and is a very informative site on the history of the WASP program, and the women who participated. The University also has an exhibit in their library honoring WASPs.

This site is a small collection within the American Memory Project website created by the Library of Congress. What makes it nice, is that it easily brings together many important documents that help provide insights into the African American experience from the slave trade to the Civil Rights era. Sometimes the larger American Memory site can be hard to navigate. This smaller sub-collection has nicely collected the highlights of the African American collection.

I heard about this site when I saw Pam Berger at the Heartland School Library Conference this summer. This sites lets you design your own interactive primary source activity. You can create digital movies, comic strips and rebus stories. Teachers can create and manage activities for a class. The site is simple enough that students (or student groups) could even create their own activities to present to their class. The site also operates completely online and requires no downloads.

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.

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 uses resources housed by the New York State Library. It is a lesson plan using newspaper articles from two New York newspapers from the late 1800s. The lesson plan includes the documents as well as activities using them. In addition to being a useful lesson plan for the Gilded Age and labor movements, it also serves a model for those wondering how to set up a unit using primary documents.

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.

Wow, this site has a huge assortment of primary source links about these subjects and locations: United States, Europe, Latin & South America, Africa & Middle East, Asia, World history, African-American, Native Americana and women's history.