A project of the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH), Verizon Thinkfinity, and the National Trust for the Humanities, EDSITEment gathers together original K-12 lesson plans and links to websites and interactive activities from around the web, in the subject areas "Arts and Culture," "Foreign Language," "Literature and Language Arts," and "History and Social Studies."

For U.S. history and social studies teachers, the heart of the site lies in the "Lesson Plans" section. Visitors can browse more than 376 lesson plans, filterable by topic, grade level, or time required to teach. Lesson plans range across all of U.S. history, and include 12 lessons designed to accompany NEH's Picturing America resources and 53 designed for its We the People program. Each plan is divided into three sections: "The Lesson," "The Basics," and "Resources." "The Lesson" lays the lesson out, including an introduction, guiding questions and learning objectives, the lesson's activities, assessment, and ideas for extending the lesson. "The Basics" gives the lesson's suggested grade level, time required, the subject areas it covers, and its authors. "Resources" rounds up required worksheets and primary sources for download.

If these lesson plans aren't enough, visitors can pick the topic "History and Social Studies" on the "Websites" page. Here, visitors can browse short annotated links to more than 219 websites, vetted by humanities specialists. (Unfortunately, this page has no dedicated search function.)

Still not enough? Visitors can also choose the topic "History and Social Studies" on the "Student Resources" page, and browse more than 124 annotated links to interactive and media features from around the web, filterable by grade level and type of resource.

EDSITEment also offers "NEH Connections," describing and linking out to teaching and learning resources funded by NEH, ranging from books and articles to professional development events, a calendar of historical events (clicking on an event links the visitor to lesson plans and other resources related to the event), and "After School" activities—five social studies and culture-related activities that students can carry out in their communities. The "Reference Shelf," under development, currently presents articles on internet browsing and assessing online resources and links to standards.

Visitors can search the entire site by keyword, grade level, subject area, and resource type using the search bar at the top right of the site. They may also sign up for the site newsletter, volunteer to write or revise lesson plans, or nominate websites for inclusion.

Overall, a valuable resource for teachers looking for ready-to-go lesson plans and guidance around the web.

Looking for resources for Constitution Day? EDSITEment collects a roundup of Constitution Day resources, including 11-item bibliography and webographies and links to relevant EDSITEment lesson plans, interactives related to the Constitution, and the full text of the Constitution in English and Spanish. The collection also links to an EDSITEment spotlight on the Constitution, highlighting more resources and providing orientation to the document and to teaching and learning more about it.

EDSITEment also looks at what led up to the creation of the Constitution (and the Articles of Confederation). In its Fourth of July feature, EDSITEment highlights more than 20 lesson plans on African Americans in the 18th and early 19th centuries, colonial protests, the Declaration of Independence, the Founders, religion's place in colonial America, and the Revolutionary War.

This website presents historical sources and teaching materials that address notions of childhood and the experiences of children and youth throughout history and around the world. Primary sources can be found in a database of 200 annotated primary sources, including objects, photographs and paintings, quantitative evidence, and texts, as well as through 50 website reviews covering all regions of the world. More than 20 reviews and more than 70 primary sources relate to North American history.

The website also includes 20 teaching case studies written by experienced educators that model strategies for using primary sources to teach the history of childhood and youth, as well as 10 teaching modules that provide historical context, strategies for teaching with sets of roughly 10 primary sources, and a lesson plan and document-based question. These teaching resources cover topics ranging from the transatlantic slave trade, to girlhood as portrayed in the novel Little Women, to children and human rights. Eight case studies relate to North American history, as do two teaching modules.

The website also includes a useful introductory essay outlining major themes in the history of childhood and youth and addressing the use of primary sources for understanding this history.

This large, attractive site provides high-quality material on American history for historians and teachers. The collection contains more than 60,000 "rare and important" American historical documents, images, and objects from 1493 to 1998; about 10,000 of these are available online. Authors include George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln.

Each week an annotated, transcribed document is featured, and an archive contains 80 past featured documents. "Treasures of the Collection" offers 24 highlighted documents and images. Six online exhibits cover topics such as Alexander Hamilton, the Dred Scott decision, Abraham Lincoln, and topics such as freedom and battles. Podcasts with historians address issues such as Presidential history and the Great Depression. Additional resources include links to historical documents, published scholarship, and general history resources on the web.

Offering 16 separate databases of digitized materials, this website provides firsthand accounts (diaries, letters, and memoirs) and literary efforts (poetry, drama, and fiction). Twelve databases pertain to American history and culture.

"Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment" offers primary sources documenting cultural interactions from 1534 to 1850. "The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries" draws on more than 400 sources and supplies a day-by-day chronology with links to documents. "Black Thought and Culture" furnishes monographs, speeches, essays, articles, and interviews. "North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories" covers 1840 to the present. "North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950" provides full-text letters and diaries from more than 1,000 women—totaling more than 21,000 documents and approximately 120,000 pages—written between 1675 and 1950.

Five databases present American literary writings: "Latino Literature"; "Black Drama"; "Asian American Drama"; "North American Women's Drama"; and "American Film Scripts Online." In addition, "Oral History Online" provides a reference work with links to texts, audio, and video files. While the databases include previously published documents, many also contain thousands of pages of unpublished material. In addition to keyword searching, the databases provide "semantic indexing"—extensive categorical search capabilities.

A cooperative effort, this online repository presents 100 milestone documents in American history. The first document is the Richard Henry Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, proposing independence for the American colonies. The last is the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In between, visitors will find Eli Whitney's 1794 cotton gin patent, the 1862 Pacific Railway Act, and the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling.

Additional documents include the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, and orders and addresses by several presidents, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. There is a full-page scan and transcription of each document. In addition to the chronological list of 100 documents, the site includes a "People's Vote." Of the 100 documents, Americans voted the Declaration of Independence number one, followed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.