The 17,500-acre Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve contains 18 working farms and 400 historical structures. Notable sites include Fort Casey State Park, Fort Ebey State Park, and a historical museum. Fort Ebey remains from the days of World War II.
The reserve offers exhibits.
The Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site is located on Tuskegee University. Sights include the George W. Carver (circa 1864-1943) Museum and The Oaks, Booker T. Washington's (1856-1915) home. Other figures honored include Dr. Frederick W. Patterson (1901-1988), founder of the United Negro College Fund, and Dr. Robert Moton, who stressed the need for health care for African American veterans. Carver is known for his support of the peanut as an alternative to the southern cotton crop, which had been ravaged by the boll weevil. Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, later the Tuskegee Institute, to provide education to African American students. Due to the strength of the aeronautical engineering program at the institute, the site was selected by the military to train African American pilots for World War II.
The site offers exhibits, interpretive programs, 30-minute introductory films on George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington, guided tours of The Oaks, period rooms, tours of the historic Tuskegee University, and 2-hour curriculum-based programs. Reservations are required for curriculum-based programs. The Oaks is not fully wheelchair accessible. Films can be played with captions.
The Old Fort Niagara State Historic Site preserves Fort Niagara, founded in 1726. The majority of structures on site date from the 18th and 19th centuries. The fort is strategically located at the mouth of the Niagara River. As a result, it was crucial to deciding American dominance in the Great Lakes Region, as opposed to control by the French or British. Both the British and French controlled either the fort itself or the site of the fort at various points of time. Soldiers lived and trained on site for both World Wars. The fort also shaped the history of the Iroquois. Collections include more than 102,000 artifacts.
The site offers period rooms, student programs, guided tours for students, school overnight programs, school outreach programs, and school distance learning programs. The website offers a virtual tour.
I teach in the inner city. What's a good opening lesson for teaching World War II?
Any day 1 lesson—regardless of the topic—should align with and introduce goals, objectives, and essential questions for a larger unit of study. Using a backwards design approach to developing curriculum, creating individual lesson plans comes after you have determined what you want students to know and be able to do throughout the unit. A good day 1, therefore, necessitates a significant amount of planning beyond the opening activities. Some sample objectives and questions for a unit of study on World War II might include: Why, after the costs of World War I, did nations choose to fight another World War? Why were the civilian costs of World War II so much higher than World War I? Why were the allies victorious?
In addition to introducing the unit, you might consider using part of the first day to investigate what your students already understand—or misunderstand—about the war, introduce key vocabulary for the unit, or preview a timeline of events that you will be studying.
You could also focus an opening lesson on investigating the origins of the war. Activities for this approach might include a multi-media slide lecture on the long and short term causes of the war, an examination of primary documents such as the Treaty of Versailles, excerpts from newspaper reports on German, Italian, and Japanese aggression, or parts of important speeches made by world leaders in the years prior to the war.
Another approach is to begin by considering the significance of the war. To do so, you could examine some statistics that indicate the enormous human cost of the war, or introduce ways that the war fundamentally changed the United States and the world. On a smaller scale, ask students what their family history is with the war and whether the war holds any significance for their family’s story.
There is no shortage of lesson plans and curriculum materials for World War II online. PBS, for example, includes several lessons to accompany Ken Burns' critically acclaimed documentary, The War. The California Department of Education's Course Models contain background information and activities for each of the state's standards, including materials on the war. And, National Geographic’s Xpedition archive includes several lessons on the war. The quality of lesson plans posted online, however, varies wildly. Consider using our rubric for evaluating lesson plans to help you make your choice.
Explore these resources for inspiration, then make some choices. Good luck!
The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is South Carolina's official state military museum. It presents the history of military actions involving South Carolinians. Collections include uniforms, weaponry, Civil War battle flags, and textiles from the 19th and 20th centuries. Wars covered include Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Seminole War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II. Exhibits are designed to meet state educational standards.
The museum offers exhibits, approximately one-hour school tours, monthly home school programming, Scout tours, JROTC tours, summer day camp, and teacher workshops. School tour options include a general tour and a tour with a focus on African American military history. The website offers activities to be completed at the museum, lesson plans, classroom activities, and a series of educational video clips.
My 8th-grade students will interview a veteran and then do independent research on those battles and locations. Do you have suggestions of sites my
students can hit that would have info about the various branches of military and info about battles, ships, planes, etc. where these vets served?
There are a number of wonderful sites for someone looking for background information about World War II, and the experiences of military men and women abroad and at home. Unfortunately, while there is considerable general information, the experiences of specific veterans can be widely varied—extending across the globe, and over land, sea, and air. Given the large number of units and the many changes in deployments over the course of the war, it can be difficult to find information about specific units on the web.
As a starting point, to transport your students back into the period you might start with some of the very broad overviews of the war by sites such as the History Channel. And (with proper warnings about the way they exaggerate and oversimplify) you might have them look at one of the War Department’s Why We Fight documentaries.
As they try to get a closer understanding of the specific experiences of particular service people and their units, your students can look at the materials prepared by the military services, which have substantial resources on the web (though they are a pretty clunky). For information on ground forces, they should check out the Army’s U.S. Center for Military History. Much of the material here consists of digitized version of print publication (hence the rather look), but it provides very comprehensive information about particular events.
The Naval History Center offers similar information for the U.S. Navy and Marine corps. Those are probably your best sources for information on the web at the unit level.
The National Archives also offers a treasure trove of information digitized from their collections, which includes everything from enlistment records of particular soldiers to photographs from the period. It can be hit-or-miss the closer you try to get to a specific person or unit, but it does provide some excellent examples of their specific experiences at the time.
Finally, the Library of Congress’s Veteran’s History Project provides a model of the kinds of information students might want to gather from each of the veterans they interview. Each interviewee in the database has a small fact sheet summarizing the key elements of their careers, and also offers digitized recordings of interviews with service men and women.
These are the best sources of information about World War II I have found on the web, though there are dozens of other sources available out there of widely varied quality. Most of the other sites are either extremely dated or are quite general summaries of broad themes and specific battles or events, but these sites should get your students started and on the right track.
The Battleship Missouri Memorial commemorates (and physically is) the U.S.S. Missouri, the site of Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces on Sept. 2, 1945, and, therefore, the conclusion of World War II. The Missouri was launched on Jan. 29, 1944, and commissioned on June 11, 1944. She was assigned to the Pacific Third Fleet and steamed into Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1944. The U.S.S. Missouri was also part of the force that carried out bombing raids over Tokyo and provided firepower in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In 1955, the Missouri was decommissioned and mothballed at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. But in 1986, she was recommissioned after undergoing an extensive modernization and refurbishment. In 1992, the Missouri was decommissioned for the second time.
The memorial offers self-guided tours; a selection of tours guided by volunteers, including retired military veterans; audio tours; Guide2Go tours; an overnight program; a 30-minute outreach presentation available to Hawaii schools; and space for school band or choir performances. The website offers a variety of curriculum ideas and resources, extensive blueprints, vessel characteristic statistics, a photo gallery, relevant videos, and oral history transcriptions.
The Northeast branch of the National Archives provides access to historic documents from the states of New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, in addition to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Research can be conducted at two main locations in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, as well as within a microfilm research area in Pittsfield, Massacusetts (Silvio O. Conte National Records Center, 10 Conte Drive).
The Boston-area archives holds documents from 1780 to present pertaining to the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. Records include, but are not limited to, census and naturalization records, Dawes Commission final cards of the Five Civilized Tribes, Chinese Exclusion cases, and passenger arrival lists.
Topics of emphasis within the collection include port commerce, desegregation, War of 1812, the Amistad case, naval stations, lighthouses, the Chinese Exclusion Act, MIT and Harvard World War II research projects, and arms manufacturing. With so much information at your fingertips, a pre-visit look through the available finding aids may be a wise time investment.
Interested in researching military records or conducting genealogical research? Access a listing of upcoming genealogical workshops. All workshops are free, but require advance registration.
Earn PD points by attending five free, monthly Thursday night programs for educators, or attend other in-service teaching with document programs. Access the calendar to plan which events to attend. Large groups can request that workshops be conducted at their own location.
In the Boston area? Plan a free, hands-on archival field trip for your class, be it kindergarten or high school. Programs are customizable, designed to meet state curriculum standards, and include a behind-the-scenes tour. Example programs address the 54th Mass. Colored Regiment, the Revolutionary War, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson, the Constitution, and migration and immigration. Please schedule ahead. The site is handicap-accessible and contains a lunchroom.
The phone and fax numbers to the left are for the Boston/Waltham location.
The New York City location holds documents from 1695 through the 1990s pertaining to New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Online finding aids are an excellent way of determining whether or not the archives may have the type of documents which you desire.
The archives offers an extensive series of public programs, including tours conducted upon request, open houses, and workshops. Workshop topics can include census records, Chinese Americans, customs records, maritime history, Civil War prize cases, and more.
Attend free professional development workshops appropriate for teachers (including home school teachers) and administrators.
Consider ordering a free CD correlating the contents of Our Documents to New Jersey and New York educational standards.
You can also schedule K-12 field trips complete with hands-on research and tours of the archives' facility.
The Northeast archives hosts a collection of online exhibits, ranging in topic from the real life von Trapp family to the Slocum tragedy.
Finally, download packets consisting of documents, transcriptions, related questions and activities, and information on how the topic relates to the standards. Teachable Texts is upgraded regularly.
The Southwest branch of the National Archives provides access to documents—such as letters, photographs, architectural drawings, and maps—which originated from federal agencies and courts. Documents on the premises date from the 1800s to late 1900s; and were created in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
Areas of collection emphasis include Native American removal, westward expansion, Chinese exclusion, segregation, repatriation, the World Wars, economic history, oil, the Civil War, slavery, and the U.S. space program.
Groups and classes are welcome to visit—with advance notice—for activities such as research, tours, internships, exhibit viewing, lectures, learning to teach history with primary sources, and genealogy workshops.
Educators may be interested in available professional development workshops on archival holdings and using primary sources. If the workshop does not take place at the archives, travel expenses may require payment.
You may also want to check the main page for links to the latest annual K-12 education newsletters.
If you are looking for a way to bring the archives into your classroom, rather than taking your class to Fort Worth, several digital options are available. For one, you could make use of student activities, such as an examination of historical U.S. census documents. You can also explore lesson plans on the domestic slave trade or illegal Chinese immigration, created by teachers; or you can even submit you own, inspired by the archives' sources. Finally, you might consider scheduling a roughly hour-long distance learning program. Available topics vary, but all programs are document-based and provided free of charge.
Interested in art? Looking for more lesson plans? Consider taking some time to explore Art and Archives, a collaboration between the Southwest branch of the National Archives and the Sid Richardson Museum. The website defines primary and secondary sources, offers art and archival vocabulary lists, and contains a collection of lesson plans which utilize art to think about history. Topics include Lewis and Clark, westward expansion, the Louisiana Purchase, cowboys, Wounded Knee, and black soldiers in the Civil War. These lesson plans are generally for middle and high school students. However, a version of the Louisiana Purchase lesson plan is listed for grade five.
The National Archives and Records Administration: Rocky Mountain Region offers access to federal photographs, paper documents, architectural drawings, and maps created in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana between 1847 and the 1990s, as well as to archival materials from North and South Dakota created after 1972. Topics represented include homesteading, Indian agencies, reclamation projects, mining, naturalizations, the World War II homefront, territorial court records, railroads, bankruptcy, genealogy, and national parks, among others.
With so many topics, how can you find what you need? Luckily, the region offers a list of online finding guides, specific to their holdings.
In addition, the region offers tours of the facilities, presentations of their holdings and services to students, and internship opportunities. Tours and presentations require appointments, and presentations can be made at the Lakewood, Colorado, facility or elsewhere. Availability of presentations made anywhere other than the main facility is subject to travel budget considerations.
NARA's Rocky Mountain Region branch is dedicated to providing professional development opportunities for educators. With advance notice, the archives provides three workshops—"Using Online Resources of the National Archives," "Hands-On History: Incorporating Primary Sources in the Classroom," and "Finding Primary Source Documents at the Rocky Mountain Regional Archives." All workshops are free. However, off-site workshops outside of the Denver metro area may require payment of travel and expense fees.
Archivists are also available to assist in student research for National History Day projects and other undertakings.
The archives is currently creating primary source document lessons for each of its constituent states. Each lesson includes one or more primary sources, background information on the source, suggested teaching activities, and a description of the document's relationship to national and state standards. Lessons are available in CD and .PDF formats.