Other
The History of the First Ten Newspapers in America
This site contains a brief history of the first ten newspapers printed in colonial America.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: News and Media Literacy
This collection, which includes videos, blog articles, student handouts, lesson plans, and tip sheets for families, helps students identify, analyze, and investigate the news and information they get from online sources. Media literacy...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Straight to the Source: Primary and Secondary Sources
Students discover what primary and secondary sources are and how to use them in this lesson from PBS Wisconsin Education. They watch video clips from the documentary "Wisconsin Hometown Stories: Neenah-Menasha," identifying the primary...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: News and Media Literacy Collection
This collection, which includes videos, blog articles, student handouts, lesson plans, and tip sheets for families, helps students identify, analyze, and investigate the news and information they get from online sources. Media literacy...
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: One Person Can Change the World
In this module, students will read primary and secondary sources about events from the Reformation movement. They will identify the central ideas of the texts, and cite evidence from the text that supports the central idea.
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: America Goes to War
This module uses excerpts from four presidential speeches delivered during World War ll as a means to instruct students about finding the central idea and supporting evidence in primary source documents.
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: Researching With Reliable Web Sources
A module to learn essential skills needed to research a topic.
Other
Harvest
Three modules explain what primary sources are; how to find primary sources in the UIUC archives; how to make sense of a primary source document by examining its creator, the context, and purpose of its creation.
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: Revolution and the Power of Words
A module where students will determine the meaning of unfamiliar terms using prior knowledge, context clues and examination of word parts.
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: The Revolutionary Americas
Find relationships among primary and secondary sources of information that identify where information from different sources converges and where it differs.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Material Culture: Images
Investigate the meaning of different cultures' images and materials. Learn to examine different questions such as what is the image, what is the meaning, what is the function, and what is the social condition.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Material Culture: Objects
Examine different objects from many different cultures. Learn how to decipher what it is, where it came from, what the function is, and who made or owned the object.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Newspapers
Discover how historians use newspapers and learn about the development of the modern newspaper. Get answers to many questions about different newspapers.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Official Documents
A guide to dissecting official documents. Learn how to find the author of documents, the primary audience, and other important information.
George Mason University
George Mason University: World History Sources: Travel Narratives
Learn about the importance of travel accounts to history. Discover how the observations and experiences of travelers can play important parts in history.
Library of Congress
Loc: Primary Source Investigation
Choose from a list of photos from the Civil War, Reform, Harlem Renaissance, and Campaign to study and record observations.
George Mason University
Chnm: Children & Youth History
"Children & Youth in History is a world history resource that provides teachers and students with access to sources about young people from the past to the present."
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Evaluating Eyewitness Reports
In this lesson, students practice working with primary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.
Library of Congress
Loc: Teachers: Using Primary Sources
The Library of Congress provides teachers with a framework that will help integrate primary sources into all areas of the curriculum. Sections include "Why to Use Primary Sources," "Citing Primary Sources," and "Finding Primary Sources."
Library of Congress
Loc: Creating a Primary Source Archive: All History Is Local
A lesson plan where students collect local primary documents and examine the interplay between national, state, local, and personal history.
Google
Google News Archive
Access thousands of primary sources documenting historic events with this Google news archive tool.
Digital History
Digital History: An Intro to the Study of History: The Four Questions [Pdf]
How does one study history? Find four basic questions that historians use to examine events in an effort to explain them and put them in historical context. By examining the Battle of Lexington and Concord, students can practice using...
Digital History
Digital History: Social Class in Colonial America [Pdf]
By examining primary sources such as diaries and tax records, and a chapter from a secondary source, learn about the social classes apparent in colonlial America. Suggested student exercises guide crtitical thinking assessment of the...
Library of Congress
Loc: Oral History and Social History
This instructional activity presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the collection, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project,...