american history resources
GENERAL AMERICAN HISTORY​
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MO Leap Blocks-American and World History COMPLETE LESSONS
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Eagle Eye Citizen A new website that lets teachers guide their students through Library of Congress resources. Focusing largely on the 20th century, this has some potential.
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Digital History The University of Houston hosts an incredible site that covers everything. Good luck exploring everything on it.
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Stanford History Ed Group SHEG is an incredible site. You can find fabulous lesson plans that require critical thinking for across the American history curriculum, a growing World history section, and some information for developing skills in the introductory section.
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Beyond the Bubble Another Stanford site, this one focusing on assessments in American history.
National History Education Clearinghouse A great resource with many, many lesson plans.
Popular Culture History A very interesting site that brings about information about popular culture throughout American history. The 20th century section is wonderful.
Gilder-Lehrman Institute An incredible resource for primary source material geared towards the American History classroom, broken down by era.
Historical Thinking Matters This is a great website, if very limited. Hopefully with some time here, some students will be inspired, and create new sources, but this is a place to start.
Crash Course: US History Playlist This is John Green at his best, running through American History. This covers the entire scope, if briefly. Better yet, set up a Youtube playlist of your own, as teacher, and share it with your students.
TimeMaps An excellent interactive map site for World History, you can focus on North America and look at the growth of US territory. This link is to North America.
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EARLY AMERICA & EXPANSION​
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Lewis and Clark, PBS Resources PBS offers great resources to help add to a study on the expedition that changed the country.
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COLONIAL AMERICA
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Colonial Williamsburg A great website with great teacher outreach programs centered around English colonization and the early years.
Colonial America Small Planet put together a great website with information about the early American colonial period.
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REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA​
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10 Resources for Teachers Richard Byrne runs some great websites for those that have a technology interest. He posted this for Social Studies teachers. Enjoy.
Too Late to Apologize Video from Soomo Publishing, a modern tune with words describing the Declaration of Independence. A lot of fun, and could inspire some creative lessons.
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CIVIL WAR ERA & RECONSTRUCTION​
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Yale Open Course You or your students can listen to the same lectures that Yale Students would hear.
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GILDED ERA THROUGH PROGRESSIVE ERA​
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Spanish American War This is a great website with so much information. Perfect for a Middle School classroom, but effective at the High School level as well. Photos, documents, and history. What excellent work.
Immigration Resources This is the website for Ellis Island. Scholastic takes you on an interactive tour of the island so critical to immigration.
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WORLD WAR I​
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First World War A great jumping off point for all things related to the first World War.
Great War This is a British site covering the Great War.
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National World War I Museum and Memorial With the centennial of the Great War, this is a great location to find information, lesson plans, and a bimonthly newsletter.
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ROARING TWENTIES
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Teaching the American 1920s Literature and culture exploration, with a variety of lesson plans to explore.
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THE GREAT DEPRESSION
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Great Depression Curriculum Lessons on teaching the economics of the Great Depression from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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WORLD WAR II
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Behind Closed Doors The conferences that shaped the war and the postwar.
History Channel's Interactive Resource This website will allow you to choose a theater, and explore information.
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THE EARLY COLD WAR
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Truman Library Cold War Lesson Plans This is a collection of teacher created lesson plans for the Cold War.
The Fifties American popular culture in the decade when pop culture came to define America in a new way: The 1950s.
JFK/Dealy Plaza Museum This is the website for the Dallas museum that houses artifacts from the assassination of a president. I haven't explored it fully, but it has some great interactive features about the assassination.
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THE VIETNAM ERA
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Vietnam War in Photos From the National Archives.
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Opposing Views on the War From Discovery Education, an activity having students look at different views of the war.
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Vietnam War Resource This is a giant database, with a lot of non academic resources. In fact, a lot of the resources seem to be armchair historians collecting the stories of their own units. Focus seems to be on unit and combat history rather than strategic or document history.
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MODERN AMERICA
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9/11 Archive
Lesson Plans
This was created to utilize primary source material available from the Truman Library. (Derek Frieling)
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Lesson Plans from the Truman Library
A repository of lessons created by teachers using primary source material from the Truman Library. There are a variety of topics and grade levels available, so take some time to look around.
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The National Archives runs the Presidential Library for modern presidents from Hoover forward. Interestingly, two presidents have two listings apiece. Look for primary sources related to the era and the president.
Teaching The Journal of American History
The Organization of American Historians, an organization for professionals in the American history field, offers up lessons based around primary sources.
This is the Missouri Secretary of State's page with links that are relevant to Missouri history.