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Tip: Press ctrl and F (or apple and F on a Mac) to perform a keyword search of this page. To keyword search all Best of History Web Sites pages use the search engine located on the home page.

Note: Best of History Web Sites features categorized and annotated lists of links to hundreds K-12 history lesson plans, teacher guides, activities, games, quizzes, and more throughout its pages. Just scroll down most BOHWS pages and you will find an abundance of quality teaching resources.

Center for History and New Media: History Matters
CHNM produces historical works in new media, tests their effectiveness in the classroom, and reflects critically on the success of new media in historical practice. CHNM's resources include a list of "best" web sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new media, a link to their excellent History Matters web site for U.S. History, and more. Resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history. Go to the Digital Blackboard section for lesson ideas that integrate the Internet.

Teaching American History
This is a wonderful collection of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other resources on teaching American history. Each project was created by teachers in Virginia at a Center for History and New Media workshop. All projects include a variety of lesson plans and resources, and some even offer instructional videos on source analysis.  The lesson plans cover a range of topics in American history and utilize interesting and engaging sources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time browsing—there are many to choose from

Learning Page (Library of Congress)
The Library of Congress is an outstanding site for American history and general studies. The Library of Congress Learning Page provides a "teacher's eye view" of over 7 million historical documents, photographs, maps, films, and audio recordings. Lesson plans can be searched by theme, topic, discipline, or era. You'll find activities, tools, ideas, and features that prove useful for teaching American History.

PBS Teacher Source
PBS is a great source for information on a myriad of historical events and personalities. PBS's assorted and diverse web exhibits supplement specific individual television series and generally include a summary of each episode, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, a glossary, photos, and links to relevant sites. Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities -- arranged by topic and grade level -- and sign up for their newsletter. Categories include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Some lesson plans require viewing PBS video, but many do not.

Mr. Donn's Pages: Free Lesson Plans, Activities, and Resources
Teacher Don Donn of the Corkran (Maryland) Middle School provides complete units on various historical topics with daily lesson plans and resources. Units include Ancient History, World Geography & Maps, World Cultures/Eastern Hemisphere, World Cultures/Western Hemisphere, World History, U.S. History & U.S. Government, Sociology & Psychology, Social Studies & Literature. The numerous lesson plans and resources available at this popular site have been developed by Mr. Donn and other contributors. Lessons are most appropriate for students in grades 5-8.

SCORE -- Schools of California Online Resources for Educators
The Schools of California Online Resources for Educators (SCORE) project is a terrific resource for teachers and students alike. You'll find lesson plans -- all rated and arranged by grade level and content area.

BBC: History
BBC's History section offers a multitude of sites, activities, games and other resources. Major categories include: Ancient History, Archaeology, Church and State, Science and Discovery, Society and Conflict, War and Culture, and Family History. There are also sections entitled Multimedia Room, Historic Figures, Timelines, Programmes, Reading Room, Talk History, For Kids, and History Trails. The BBC Multimedia zone offers games, animations, virtual tours, and galleries. Many games deal with various aspects of British history.

Digital History
A great site from Steven Mintz that includes: a U.S. history e-textbook; over 400 annotated documents and primary sources on slavery, Mexican American and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; short essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; and reference resources that include a searchable database of 1,500 annotated links, classroom handouts, chronologies, glossaries, an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

Edsitement -- Marco Polo
EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of the Great City Schools, MarcoPolo Foundation and the National Trust for the Humanities. All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. This impressive site features reviewed links to top sites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to help with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You can search lesson plans by subcategory and grade level; middle school lessons are the most numerous.

Blue Web'n Weekly Updates
A Pacific Bell production, the Blue Web'n pages are an invaluable source of up-to-date reviews of education-oriented web sites. New sites are described, rated, and classified by grade level and content. Bi-weekly e-mail updates are free and are a great source of up-to-date information.

Lesson Plans and Resources for Social Studies Teachers
Dr. Marty Levine, Professor Emeritus of Secondary Education, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), has gathered lesson plans and resources from the Internet that social studies teachers should find very useful. Among the categories are Lesson Plans and Teaching Strategies, Online Activities, and Teaching Current Events. The site is detailed and well organized, but not actively maintained and thus there are several broken links.

Education with Student News
This CNN Education site provides teachers with instructional materials for integrating current events across the curriculum. A student section keeps students in grades 6-12 aware of the latest news of interest to them. Lesson plans, background material, profiles, links to useful Internet sites, and forums for interaction with other teachers are all included.

The Web Quest Page
A WebQuest is a form of project-based and problem-based learning in which the resources are located on the Web. These inquiry-oriented educational sites are produced by educators for use by students and are modeled on a template developed by Professor Bernie Dodge. Some WebQuests are very impressive -- others are less so. I would suggest consulting the Portal, which contains an updated matrix of pre-selected Web Quests, and then looking for WebQuests in the "top" category. WebQuest links should be checked to make sure they are active.

Education World: History Center
Education World provides practical resources for history educators. You'll find lesson plans, articles about what other teachers are doing, professional development resources and more. Education World offers timelines, activities, work sheets, games, homework help, clip art, images, and articles.

The New York Times Learning Network
This informative site offers detailed lesson plans and quizzes built around New York Times articles. Check out the Lesson Plan Archive and search by keyword, subject, or grade level. Social studies lesson plans are objective and standard-based and are well supported by charts, graphs, and images.

Discoveryschool.com: Lesson Plan Library
The Discoveryschool.com Lesson Plan Library offers history and government lesson plans for Ancient History, U.S History, and World History. Lesson plans are organized as per Grades K-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12 and provide: Objectives, Materials, Procedures, Adaptations, Discussion Questions, Evaluation, Extensions, Suggested Readings, Links, Vocabulary, Academic Standards, and Credit.

SchoolHistory.co.uk
School History is a bountiful online history site that offers huge numbers of freely downloadable resources, interactive and entertaining history games and quizzes, interactive online lessons together with comprehensive links to online resources.

History Lesson Plans and Resources
Edmund J. Sass, Ed.D, developed this page primarily for use by education students at the College of Saint Benedict/St.John's University. He offers an extensive list of history lesson plans as well as lesson plans related to terrorism, tolerance, or the events of September 11.

HistoryTeacher.net
An impressive, award-winning site from a New York high school teacher. Features many research links and curriculum resources for Global Studies, U.S. AP History, US European History, and American History and Government. Also has quizzes, news links, and more.

The History News Network
The HistoryNewsNetwork was created in June 2001 and features articles by historians on both the left and the right who provide historical perspective on current events. HNN exists to provide historians and other experts a national forum in which to educate Americans about important and timely issues, and it is the only web site on the Internet wholly devoted to this task. HNN is a nonprofit publication run by George Mason University, is updated daily, and averages roughly 1.5 million hits a month. Those of you who have visited the U.S. History landing page in Best of History Web Sites may have noticed that I link to HNN articles in the U.S. History in the Classroom section.

ThinkQuest Library
The ThinkQuest Library is a free educational resource featuring 5,500+ websites created by students around the world as part of a competition. Quality of individual sites varies, but some are outstanding and serve as an example to students of what they can accomplish. Go to Libraries to visit sites on Geography and Cultures from students from various countries. Unfortunately some excellent older sites have been taken down.

History Channel
A companion to the television channel, this commercial site contains a myriad of features and highlights for educators and students alike. Key offerings include: study guides and activities, ideas from teachers, special exhibits, speech archives, discussions, and "This Day in History." Also, try the UK site at www.thehistorychannel.co.uk and student site: www.historystudystop.co.uk

Awesome Stories
AwesomeStories.com is a free, non-commercial educational web site for educators (as the basis for lesson plans) and students. Stories link to organized primary and secondary source materials found principally at U.S. and other worldwide national archives, museums, libraries, universities, news organizations, and government web sites. The purpose of the site (including its eight separate, stand-alone channels) is to take visitors on a virtual guided tour of relevant on-line source materials. Be sure to check out Click2History.

National Council for the Social Studies: Social Studies.org
National Council for the Social Studies offers support for social studies educators. Links are categorized by themes of the Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Teachers share classroom experiences at the site and on the NCSS listserv. The National Council for the Social Studies Data Bank features an annotated list of teaching resources categorized by the ten themes of the Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Many of these resources involve technology integration, especially internet use.

Voice of the Shuttle: History Page
Part of an extensive guide to humanities resources that provides numerous links to feature sites, teaching resources, electronic journals, course syllabi, and more. Aimed at university educators.

The Gateway
Contains thousands of educational resources including over 3000 history lesson plans and 2000+ history activities. Annotated and organized by grade level.

C-SPAN in the Classroom
Access C-SPAN's complete program archives. C-SPAN in the Classroom is a free membership service that offers information and resources to assist educators in their use of primary source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You do not have to be a member to use C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but membership includes access to teaching ideas, activities and classroom tools

Smithsonian Education: Lesson Plans
There are only a dozen or so history lesson plans at the Smithsonian site, but they are engaging, quality teaching resources worth exploring.

Educational Resources from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s site offers information on the Federal Reserve System and monetary policy with sections for students, teachers, and the general public. A highlight from the Student Activities section is “FedVille” which allows students to explore the subject of economics through a fun and interactive game. Teacher Resources provides course material and helpful link. For information on a variety of more specific topics, see the helpful Publications section.

The Educator's Reference Desk: Lesson Plans
Formerly AskEric, the Educator's Reference Desk is a project of the Information Institute of Syracuse. The Lesson Plan section contains unique social studies and history lesson plans written and submitted by teachers for various grade levels. There are only fifteen history lesson plans but dozens of social studies lesson plans.

The LessonPlansPage.com
The Lesson Plans Page is a collection of over 2,500 lesson plans, primarily at the elementary level, that were developed by Kyle Yamnitz, students, and faculty at The University of Missouri.

Tip: See "Examples of Virtual Tours and Electronic Field Trips"from the Center for Teaching History with Technology for an annotated list of great sites for virtual tours.

Teacher's Virtual School
The Spartacus Teachers' Virtual School History Department provides lessons under Key Stage (2,3,4) and Topic. Teachers are invited to send in details of any online history lessons they have produced for their students.

edClass
EdClass by SchoolKiT is a library of hundreds of classroom-ready learning modules that make use of technology to enhance learning. There are some excellent sample modules to peruse at the site, but you must register to gain access to all the modules.

Spartacus: History
Run by a small educational publishing company, this website provides free online materials for major history curriculum subjects. Visitors can sign up for a free monthly e-mail newsletter covering web reviews and using technology in the history classroom.

Social Studies Lesson Plans
Much information on government and politics for 9-12 students. Has many "mini" activities that do not necessarily involve the Web

Digital History: Links to Games About Historical Topics
The terrific Digital History site has links to several sites that offer quizzes or games.

Oral Histories
This website, run by the Oral History Society, provides some good practical advice on how to start an oral history project.

Classroom Lesson Plans: Teaching About 9-11
History News Network -- In addition to the sites listed by HNN, teachers may want to consult "911digitalarchive.org/stories", which is sponsored by the Center for History & New Media at George Mason University and the American Social History Project/Center for Media & Learning at CUNY. This site features a large digital archive of individuals' stories about 9-11.

Out of Many: A History of the American People -- Lesson Plans
Focus Lessons for Out of Many highlight important ideas and concepts in each chapter as well as the relevant sections in the program's ancillaries. The Focus Lessons, written by an experienced AP teacher, suggest strategies for assessing how well your students understand the important points in each chapter and also provide test-taking tips that will help your students prepare for and take the AP United States History test successfully.

The American Nation: A History of the United States -- Lesson Plans
Focus Lessons for The American Nation highlight important ideas and concepts in each chapter as well as the relevant sections in the program's ancillaries. The Focus Lessons, written by an experienced curriculum developer, suggest strategies for assessing how well your students understand the important points in each chapter and also provide test-taking tips that will help your students prepare for and take the A United States History test successfully.

World Civilizations: The Global Experience -- Lesson Plans
Focus Lessons for World Civilizations highlight important ideas and concepts in each chapter, as well as the relevant sections in the program's ancillaries. The Focus Lessons, written by an experienced AP teacher, suggest strategies for assessing how well your students understand the important points in each chapter, and also provide test-taking tips that will help your students prepare for and take the AP World History test successfully.

Learn History
Learn History is produced by a History teacher at a London high school and features notes, quizzes, exercises and PowerPoint lessons.

TagTeacherNet
The website allows teachers to share news, views, resources and advice. The history section provides links to Associations, Events, Journals, Learning Resources, Lesson Plans, Maps, Revision, Suppliers, Teaching Resources, Timelines and Virtual Museums. You must sign up for the free membership in order to use the TagTeacherNet resource area.

Primary Source Materials and Document Based Questions
An Internet Hotlist on Document Based Questions. Many useful links here.

Web Guide for AP World History
The Web Guide for AP World History includes some 500 web links that are categorized and annotated to compliment the AP World History course. The Web Guide is organized into the five sections of the AP World History course: Foundations, 1000-1450, 1450-1750, 1750-1914, and 1914-present. The thematic and analytical sections that are presented follow the structure of the AP World History course. Visitors must register through the College Board.

GCSE History Pages
Main features of this site include interactive tests and quizzes, revision tips, practice GCSE exam papers with mark-schemes for self assessment, revision notes and structured lessons.

Course Models: Medieval Europe
Part of the California History-Social Science content standards and annotated course which include: background information, focus questions, pupil activities and handouts, assessment, and references to books, articles, web sites, literature, audio-video programs, and historic site. Grade 7.

History 20
The Saskatchewan Social Studies Curriculum has developed a "resource hot sheet" dealing with topics identified in the History 20 (Modern World History) curriculum. The resource hot sheets can act as a primary or secondary reading, or to assist in classroom discussions of a variety of topics. Each page has been supported with appropriate visual images, and where possible, first person accounts by individuals who were present during the event. In addition, a number of multimedia-learning objects have been place including sound bites, mini - movies and flash items. Two major simulations have been developed for students that can be used in a stand-alone delivery mode. The Battle of the Somme and Decision in Normandy provide students with the opportunity to participate in two major historical events of the 20th century. Students take on the role of a World War One general or recreate the events around the Normandy Invasion.

HistoryTeacher.net: AP U.S. Quizzes
The quizzes and puzzles are part of a general site called American Resources. They are arranged chronologically and thematically; the quiz questions are challenging, but there are only five per section.

Practice Quizzes and Crossword Puzzles for U.S. History
The quizzes and puzzles are part of a general site called American Resources. They are arranged chronologically and thematically; the quiz questions are good, but there are only five per section.

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