The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of primary sources that include audio recordings, sheet music, political cartoons, documents and more. Check out the links below.

• Education Resources from the Library of Congress
• Chronicling America: American Historic Newspapers  
  provides background information, important dates,  and links to sample articles . Newspaper pages can be accessed as scrollable pdfs. Click to view example.
• Primary source sets. such as Children’s Lives at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.
• Analysis Tools and Guide
• Film and Video Collections at the Library of Congress
• Library of Congress YouTube Channel click to view The First Circus, silent film.
• The Veteran’s History Project
  provides eyewitness accounts from  those who participated in America’ wars
• Shortcuts for finding primary sources

Teaching Ideas

• Leaving Evidence of our Everyday Lives Lesson Plan
• What’s in Lincoln’s Pockets Lesson Plan

Teaching students how to formulate questions

• Experiencing the Question Formulation Technique™

Stanford History Education Group

• Reading Like a Historian Lessons
  [free registration required to view the lessons and materials] Lessons for United States and World History
• Beyond the Bubble
  a series of short assessments designed to assess the historical skills of sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, use of evidence and periodization.
• Civic Reasoning
• Teaching History (National History  Education Clearinghouse)

Think Historically video of the historical thinking process

• Docs Teach
  an online tool from the National Archives with links to resources, teaching tips,and activity tools to create your own interactive activity. [free registration required for create tool]
• HSI Historical Scene Investigation contains a series of prepared investigations such as the Boston Massacre including four steps: becoming a detective, investigating the evidence, searching for clues, and cracking the case. The materials were developed by the  College of William and Mar School of Education, University of Kentucky School of Education and a grant from the Teaching with Primary Sources Program of the Library of Congress.
• Histoical Thinking  Matters,a project of the Roy Rozsnzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University
  features inquiries about the Spanish American War, the Scopes Trial, Social Security, and Rosa Parks.links to 100 milestone do0ucments of American  history from the National Archives

Picturing America Teachers Resource Book produced by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Picturing America Gallery
provides access to the images provides as posters as part of the project. Also includes vidoes explaining the pictures.

Learn More

Integrating History and Geographic Thinking

Presidential Libraries

• Rutherford B. Hayes
• Herbert Hoover
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 
• Harry S.  Truman
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• John F. Kennedy
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald R. Ford
• Jimmy Carter
• George H.W. Bush
• Ronald Reagan
• William J. Clinton
• George W. Bush
• Barack Obama

Miller Center at the University of Virginia provides in-depth background information about the lives, and foreign and domestic legacies of U.S. Presidents.
provides access to sites containing histori sites and monuments such as the National Historic Trails for The Mormon Pioneer Trails Across Iowa in 1846  and the Cape Henry Memorial

Learn More about the Library of Congress

• The History Channel Movie – Library of Congress Visitor Experience