From TED-Ed:
"Article II of the United States Constitution allows for three separate branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), along with a system of checks and balances should any branch get too powerful. Belinda Stutzman breaks down each branch and its constitutionally-entitled powers."
This website explores the vaccination process from 900 CE to the present day. Tracing humanity's earliest known observations about disease transmission and immunity up to modern vaccination programs, the website includes articles, primary sources, and interactive activities.
Most attractive to educators will be the "Gallery" section. Browse more than 550 primary sources related to disease and vaccination, including pamphlets, photographs, artifacts, and more, as well as 90 videos. For easier browsing, filter the sources by topic, media type, or time period.
History teachers will also appreciate the "Activities" section. Seven interactive diagrams illustrate scientific and historical concepts, including herd immunity, how vaccinations work and how they are made, and changes in required vaccines over time. "Pioneer Breakthroughs," an interactive quiz, tests players' knowledge of vaccine-related discoveries, and "The Scientific Method" walks players through the steps in identifying the source of a disease outbreak and containing it. "Illsville," an online game, challenges players to keep the population of a town healthy from 1600 through the present day.
The site also includes an interactive timeline featuring images and short synopses of events from 900 CE to the present. View all of the events, or filter them by topic.
A database of essays in "Articles" covers more than 50 topics in the categories "Vaccine Science," "History and Society," "Vaccine Information," "Vaccine-preventable Diseases," and "Common Questions."
Note the four lesson plans in the "Educators" section. Spanish-language versions of site content are available as well.
In partnership with the National Center for Family Literacy, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History shares its work in linking literature, history, and hands-on learning on this site. A spin-off of programs presented in the museum, OurStory highlights 18 notable children's fiction and nonfiction books, including Ken Mochizuki's Baseball Saved Us, Doreen Rappaport's Martin's Big Words, and Peter and Connie Roop's Keep the Lights Burning, Annie.
The site summarizes each book and offers parents and teachers a downloadable reading guide, including vocabulary; pre-, during, and post-reading activities; descriptions and images of Smithsonian artifacts related to the text or illustrations; and related NCHS History Standards. Downloadable activity guides, outlining activities such as making a Jailed for Freedom suffragist's pin or roleplaying contemporary debate on the March on Washington, also accompany each book summary.
Visitors may browse the featured books by time period, and the activity guides by activity type. In addition, visitors may search a database of 290 fiction and nonfiction books for young people by title, author, topic, age group, book type (fiction or nonfiction), and awards (Caldecott Medal, Newberry Medal, Coretta Scott King Award, Golden Kite Award, or Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award). Resulting entries are sparse, offering only a one-sentence summary and basic facts about the book, but teachers may still find the database useful if they're actively in search of tested titles for teaching U.S. history.
Finally, visitors can find basic suggestions on where to look locally for field trip destinations under "Field Trips."
More than 137,000 photographs of Florida, many focusing on specific localities from the mid-19th century to the present, are available on this website. The collection, including 15 online exhibits, is searchable by subject, photographer, keyword, and date.
Materials include 35 collections on agriculture, the Seminole Indians, state political leaders, Jewish life, family life, postcards, and tourism among other things. Educational units address 17 topics, including the Seminoles, the Civil War in Florida, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, pioneer feminist Roxcy Bolton, the civil rights movement in Florida, and school busing during the 1970s.
"Writing Around Florida" includes ideas to foster appreciation of Florida's heritage. "Highlights of Florida History" presents 46 documents, images, and photographs from Florida's first Spanish period to the present. An interactive timeline presents materials—including audio and video files—on Florida at war, economics and agriculture, geography and the environment, government and politics, and state culture and history.
Take some time on this guide to all things West Virginia. This website offers a plethora of articles from "Abolitionism" to "John Zontini." To aid your search, you can sort through articles by topical category, alphabetical order, selecting "random article," or running a keyword search for specific interests. Your search will return media as well as text results, nicely sorted into separate categories. Articles are brief, but cross-referenced; and they also include citations and images, when available and appropriate.
The encyclopedia also includes larger sets of information and images referred to as exhibits. Topics include steamboats, John Henry, the Kanawha County Textbook Controversy, the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, coal mining, historic preservation, the Swiss community of Helvetia, the Greenbrier resort, and labor. A similar feature offers a handful of historical West Virginia maps.
Want something more interactive? Try the thematic 10-question quizzes, forums, or interactive maps and timelines.
The more than 3,500 full-text documents available on this website address the legal, economic, political, diplomatic, and government history of the U.S. Documents are divided into five time periods—pre-18th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries—and include treaties, presidential papers and addresses, and colonial charters, as well as state and federal constitutional and legal documents.
The materials are categorized into 64 document collections as well, such as American Revolution, Federalist Papers, slavery, Native Americans, Confederate States of America, World War II, Cold War, Indochina, Soviet-American diplomacy, and September 11, 2001. By clicking "What's New," the latest digitized documents become available. Material also can be accessed through an alphabetical list of 350 more specific categories, keyword searching, and advanced searching. Most of these documents are directly related to American history, but the site includes some materials on European and modern diplomatic history.
I teach Native American history/studies. . . It is difficult finding curriculum and good lessons for these subjects. I would really like to find a good text book but have not been able to. . . [A]ny ideas or suggestions would be helpful. . .
There are several textbook-y resources available that we like. Consider the readers in the Bedford Series in History and Culture. Three of these paperback readers address Native American history, including The Cherokee Removal and The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. Each of the readers begins with an introductory essay that provides an overview narrative of the topic and its historiographical context. Following this essay are selected primary and secondary sources accompanied by orienting background information. Depending on the ages and abilities of your students, these readers can serve as a resource for creating source-based activities and lectures, or for older and more capable students, they can be a kind of textbook. However, be forewarned, if you are working with younger students, you will likely need to further excerpt and prepare many of the provided sources.
For a lengthier survey textbook that is popular and worth investigating, try First Peoples by Colin G. Calloway. Also consider the documentary series, We Shall Remain, a recent entry in the excellent PBS series, The American Experience. You can find teaching activities and full episodes on the series’ companion website. Also see this blog for links related to this series. All of these resources can help you craft lessons that emphasize both the diversity of Native Americans and the fact that they are still with us today—two ideas that challenge many students’ misconceptions about this topic.
I would like to develop an elective for teaching Native American history. I am looking for a class on teaching Native American history. If you could let me know of any classes, books, or other ancillary materials I would appreciate it very much.
The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC offers a variety of resources about American Indian history including workshops for teachers.
For resources you can use with students, see our response to a teacher who asked about classroom resources for teaching a Native American history course.
We also recommend contacting local tribes and organizations directly to see what resources they recommend that you use to learn about their history. Below are some organizations you might consider:
In Connecticut, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center provides a wealth of resources. They offer professional development to teachers as well. The center also offers workshops on how to evaluate books and other materials about Native Americans and have several educational programs for students based on the Connecticut Curriculum framework. The center designs workshops based on teacher interest as well. The Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center provides a recommended reading list and a research library.
If you will be in Minnesota for the summer you may want to check out the American Indian Policy Center in St. Paul and The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. These organizations offer resources, and can most likely direct you to additional educational resources.
You can search the NHEC site for relevant local museums, websites, and professional development opportunities. If you have not done so already, remember to also check the course offerings at your local colleges.
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties is the digitized version of Indian Affairs, a highly regarded, seven-volume compendium of treaties, laws, and executive orders relating to U.S.-Indian affairs. Charles J. Kappler originally compiled the volume in 1904 and updated afterward through 1970.
Volume II presents treaties signed between 1778 and 1882. Volumes I and III-VII cover laws, executive and departmental orders, and important court decisions involving Native Americans from 1871 to 1970. Some volumes also provide tribal fund information. This version includes the editor's margin notations and detailed index entries, and allows searches across volumes. It provides a comprehensive resource for legal documents on U.S. relations with Native Americans.
This collection of materials (more than 80 items) comes from rare books, pamphlets, journals, pulp magazines, newspapers, and original photographs. The illustrations reflect European interpretations of Native Americans, images of popular culture, literary and political observations, and artistic representations. The three main sections are "Portrayals of Native Americans," "The Nine Millionth Volume," and a timeline.
"Portrayals" is divided into four online galleries: Color Plate Books, Foreign Views, Mass Market Appeal, and Early Ethnography. The galleries incorporate the renowned works of George Catlin and Edward S. Curtis, and the lesser-known works of early 19th-century Russian artist-explorer Louis Choris. "Mass market" features 32 illustrations, including colorful images of western novel covers and portraits of southwestern Indians. "Early ethnography" contains a newspaper article about a Native American family, five photographs, and 15 illustrations of Indians at play and at war. "The Nine Millionth Volume" is devoted to James Otto Lewis's historic volume, The Aboriginal Port Folio, a series of hand-colored lithographic portraits of American Indian chiefs.