History and Social Science

History and Social Science

Digital and online resources for teachers to develop lessons, locate primary and secondary source materials, and connect students with resources for research and inquiry-based lessons.

  • Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

  • The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers effectively use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections in their teaching.

  • The Stanford History Education Group is an award-winning research and development group that seeks to improve education by conducting research, working with school districts, and reaching directly into classrooms with free materials for teachers and students. Their current work focuses on how young people evaluate online content. Their Civic Online Reasoning curriculum to help students develop the skills needed to navigate our current digital landscape.

  • The Smithsonian

  • Many museums, cultural sites, and historical sites offer virtual tours and livestreaming. Here are a few, but an internet search will reveal many others:

  • The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. They aim to equip students with the analytical tools to make sense of and improve the world today. Their website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme (https://www.zinnedproject.org/teaching-materials/explore-by-theme), time period (https://www.zinnedproject.org/teaching-materials/explore-by-time-period), and grade level. The teaching materials emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history: https://www.zinnedproject.org/

  • World History For Us All is a national collaboration of K-12 teachers, collegiate instructors, and educational technology specialists. This is a great site for middle and high school teachers to locate powerful, innovative model curriculum. World History for Us All helps students understand the past by connecting specific subject matter to larger historical patterns, and draws on up-to-date historical research.

  • Teaching California offers free online instructional materials to support the California History-Social Science Framework, with an emphasis on primary sources.

  • The Content, Literacy, Inquiry, and Citizenship (CLIC) Project offers resources for educators to take an inquiry-based approach to learning about various topics including Armenian Genocide, the Bracero Program, Environmental Literacy, and approaches to civic learning (Check with regional leads for additional resources available for online learning).

  • California History-Social Science Project provides professional learning and free resources such as The History Blueprint and The Source. See links to regional sites for additional information and support.

  • BBC Bitesize History Bitesize is the BBC's free online study support resource for school-age students in the United Kingdom. It is designed to aid students in both schoolwork and, for older students, exams.

  • The Stanford History Education Group provides free History and Civic materials including lessons, curriculum, and assessments accessible to teachers and students.

  • CrashCourse History Channel on YouTube Crash Course believes that high quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free. The Crash Course team has produced more than 15 courses to date, and these videos accompany high school and college level classes ranging from the humanities to the sciences. Crash Course transforms the traditional textbook model by presenting information in a fast-paced format, enhancing the learning experience. With hundreds of millions of views on our YouTube channel, Crash Course has a worldwide audience in and out of classrooms. While the show is an immensely helpful tool for students and teachers, it also has a large viewership of casual learners who seek out online educational content independently. It has changed attitudes towards education by creating a community of learners who are looking for more than just help passing a test.

  • Oyez is a resource for teaching Supreme Court Cases that includes the case history, relevant precedent, arguments, and the Supreme Court Decision and applicable dissents.

  • The National Archives features a website that is easy to navigate and includes lots of teacher resources. They feature a daily historical document relating to an event from that day in history. The online catalog can be searched using keywords, and 100 "milestone" documents are identified as significant to American history.

  • National Archives: Elementary School Distance Learning Programs Free, interactive programs that feature primary sources from the Distance Learning Programs. Each program aligns with National Social Studies Standards and Common Core State Standards. It also provides teacher guides with pre- and post-program lessons.

  • DocsTeach is full of activities for educators. The documents are organized by different periods in American history. If you're teaching "Civil War and Reconstruction" or "Revolution and the New Nation," just click on the topic to find hundreds of primary source documents. DocsTeach provides audio, video, charts, graphs, maps and more.

  • Spartacus Educational is a resource for global history. It contains free encyclopedia entries that directly connect to primary source documents, making it a useful tool for educators looking to give students a starting point in their research.

  • Fordham University is another resource for global history. It organizes primary sources into periods of American history, from the "Reformation" to "Post-World War II Religious Thought." Teachers can find full texts available from Fordham or similar institutions appropriate for the middle school and high school classroom.

  • Broken down by time period then listed in alphabetical order, the Avalon Project at Yale University offers primary sources for global history teachers. This database starts with ancient and medieval documents and moves into present times. In addition to categories that address specific historical periods, the Avalon Project includes links to human rights documents as part of Project Diana.

  • USHistory.org Free Online Textbooks provides high school courses for students, teachers, home-schoolers, and history lovers.

  • Google and Life Magazine have a search engine that lets users search millions of images from the Life Magazine Photo Archive. Users can type in key terms to guide their searches, look through images organized by decade (1860s through 1970s), or significant people, places, events or sports topics.