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Intermediate Senior History

Lesson Plans

Watergate
List of PBS episodes about Watergate

Truman Doctrine
From the Truman Library, a lesson plan on the Truman Doctrine and the strategy of containment.

Teaching the Vietnam War
From PBS, this website includes lesson plans and videos to help students gain a deeper understanding of the Vietnam War.

Museum of the Moving Image: Presidential Candidates
An American site where you can view American presidential advertisements and create lesson plans around them.

Teaching the Civil War
A PBS Learning Media resource collection on the American Civil War including videos, lesson plans, images, and interactive activities.

U.S. History Collection (PBS LearningMedia)

Expand students’ understanding of U.S. History with culturally inclusive resources that bring the major people, events, and trends in history alive, while integrating often untold stories into the curriculum. Curated clips of trusted PBS programs and a diverse array of other media and interactive resources develop students’ historical thinking skills while broadening their appreciation of history’s multiple perspectives and complexity.

Includes resources by time periods and by skill (e.g., analyzing primary sources, developing an argument, etc.)

 

The History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
From TedEd, this lesson plan includes a short video on the Cuban Missile Crisis, multiple choice questions and open answer questions, and discussion questions.

Primary Sources

The Right to Vote
From the Library of Congress, this resource is a collection of primary sources on various groups gaining the right to vote in the United States. 

US History Primary Source Timeline
From the Library of Congress, a collection of primary sources from the 1600s to 1968.

New York Times 1851- (excluding latest two years)
Copies of the New York Times dating back to 1851.

The Times Digital Archive: 1785-1985
A searchable archive dating back to 1785.

Frontier Life
This digital collection of primary source documents helps us to understand existence on the edges of the anglophone world from 1650-1920. Discover various European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa, and Australasia through documents that reveal the lives of settlers and Indigenous peoples in these areas.
Clicking on the Document Type tab will reveal the variety of primary sources available to search.

American Memory
Historical collections for the US National Digital Library.

War of 1812 Primary Source Collection
A collection of primary documents from Sam Houston State University.

WWII Poster Collection
From Northwestern University, more than 300 WWII-era posters issued by various US government agencies.

Documenting the American South
Government documents, personal diaries, religious pamphlets, books, some photographs, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. 

NYPL Digital Gallery
Open access to 700 000 images including manuscripts, posters, vintage posters, maps, photographs, and rare prints. 

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Document projects that include 1800 documents, approximately 740 images (photos and illustrations) and over 600 links to other websites.

Internet Modern History Sourcebook
From Fordham University, this resource contains thousands of documents from the modern era.

Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment 
Contains over 1400 authors and over 100 000 pages of primary works such as letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts, as well as images of early encounters.

Other Resources

Freedom Riders: American Experience
A collection of videos from PBS, discussing the Freedom Riders.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
The Searchable Museum site provides online access to eomprehensive exhibits across topics in African American history.

For Teachers

Video Collections