Welcome to Teaching Materials

Spotlight on Elementary Education

History is made by those who are unafraid to push the envelope and redefine the society in which they live. Encourage your students to examine the men and women who worked to make America what it is today with this creative activity. FIND OUT MORE »

Lesson Plan Reviews

Evaluate key elements of effective teaching Watch the INTRODUCTORY VIDEO
Lewis and Clark: Same Place, Different Perspectives

How geography influenced interactions among Lewis, Clark, & Native [...] »

Locate Yourself on a Map of the Americas

Young students locate themselves on a map and explore spatial relationships [...] »

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English Language Learners

Instructional strategies and resources for ELL
Why Did It Happen? Making Claims about Cause and Effect

A shift in writing is required, often using new language tools, when making [...] »

Life, Liberty and Property: What’s the Big Idea?

Explore a lesson, designed especially for English Language Learners, that [...] »

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Teaching Guides

Explore new teaching methods and approaches
Free Speech Teaching Guide 2: Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): Defining and Arguing Hate Speech

This teaching guide includes a structured guide to explaining the case [...] »

Using Old Maps as Tools to Explore Our World

Maps show far more than how to go from point A to point B! Discover how to [...] »

Native Women and Suffrage - Beyond the 19th Amendment: A Guide for Pre-Service Teachers

Using primary sources from the Library of Congress, help students reconsider [...] »

Free Speech Teaching Guide 1: The Birth of the Modern First Amendment and How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind

This guide focuses on the history of free speech in one crucial year ( [...] »

Using Blogs in a History Classroom

Setting up and maintaining a blog for your classroom is easy (and typically [...] »

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Ask a Master Teacher

Making Personal Connections to the Past by Finding Historians
Photography, Dr. T. Rice, Nov 1941, Jack Delano, LOC

Whether you use the telephone or Skype, there are a number of ways to [...] »

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