Social Studies
Enjoy the collated resources in this Social Studies. If you have suggestions, please submit suggestions using the form on the left.
- Central Rivers AEA:
- Keystone AEA:
- Mississippi Bend:
- Grant Wood:
- Great Prairie:
- Green Hills:
- Heartland:
- Northwest:
- Prairie Lakes:
Here you will find a rich interactive collection of activities and they can all be yours to discover when you visit the Annenberg Learner Social Science Collection. Choose from some engaging opportunities that will benefit a wide variety of social studies classrooms. You can pick from Psychology, Political Science, Area Studies/Geography, History, and Anthropology/Archeology.
Access: Annenberg Learner
This animated educational web site is especially for kids and their learning about social studies.
Access: Brain Pop
Cornell University and University of Michigan libraries’ Making of America projects are collections of journals and newspapers from the antebellum, wartime and reconstruction periods.
Access: Cornell University and University of Michigan libraries’ Making of America projects
The link brings you to the lesson plan page, be sure to explore other amazing areas in the site. The lesson plans can be explored by Art & Culture, World Language, History & Social Studies , AP U.S. History, and Literature & Language Arts. Be sure to explore the Student Activities. These are engaging interactive activities by grade or subject area collected from around the Web. They can be used to support related lesson plans or as standalone activities in the classroom.
Access: Edsitement
Finding Dulcinea - Sweet Search offers examples of how to write about a historical event by finding outstanding resources on the Web, and synthesizing them into an article.
Access: Finding Dulcinia - Sweet Search
This matrix integrates Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) with Bloom's Cognitive Process Dimensions.
Access: Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrix - Social Studies and Humanities CRM
This site provides social studies resources for instruction in social studies.
The Iowa Council for the Social Studies is an affiliate of the National Council for the Social Studies.
This site provides information on laws and regulations for social studies as well as teacher requirements and resources for teaching social studies.
High quality instructional tools and online access to excellent teaching resources.
Access: Iowa History Online
This Presidential Library provides multiple resources for students, families, teachers! Check out digital resources for campaigns and elections.
This site provides tools and resources for Grades K-8.
Access: Kennedy Center - Any Given Child
The Library of Congress is a great source to find historical documents, photos, art, maps, audio and video, artifacts and other items. The American Memory section organizes items based on topics, time periods and places of American history. The World Digital Library, a cooperative project with UNESCO, includes rare documents from around the world.
Access: The Library of Congress
The Library of Congress’ Chronicling America displays images of late 19th and early 20th century American newspaper pages.
This is another creative social studies blog filled with valuable resources and information. It’s content is relevant, engaging, and bound to get students excited about learning all those areas that the social studies encompass. Get ready for a lot of resources.
Access: Mr. D’s Neighborhood
The National Archives and Records Administration has a massive collection of material on U.S. history that can sometimes be overwhelming to search through. The Resources for National History Day Research page guides students on where to find material in the archives.
A nationally known organization that has engaged the talents of scores of classroom teachers and provided history educators across the nation with new historical resources and teaching strategies. NCHS’s double mission is (a) to aid the professional development of K-12 history teachers; and (b) to work with teachers to develop curricular materials that will engage students in exciting explorations of United States and World history.
A nationwide network that leads in promoting economic literacy with students and their teachers. NCEE's mission is to help students develop the real-life skills they need to succeed: to be able to think and choose responsibly as consumers, savers, investors, citizens, members of the workforce, and effective participants in a global economy.
An organization working to enhance the status and quality of geography teaching and learning.
Social studies educators teach students the content knowledge, intellectual skills, and civic values necessary for fulfilling the duties of citizenship in a participatory democracy. The mission of National Council for the Social Studies is to provide leadership, service, and support for all social studies educators.
Check out this site for resources for teaching and learning about World War I.
The New York Times has a wonderful selection of articles and lessons that have a wide range of social studies ideas. You will find categories covering regular social studies, civics, american history, global history, this day in history, geography, current events, and economics. The lessons contain wonderful readings, graphics, and ideas to add to any social study class digital collection.
Access: New York Times Learning Network
What a wonderful place to find open educational resources. In fact, the link provided will bring up over 10, 000 resources just in the social sciences. Take some time and do a search for the exact category of social studies desired. There are some great resources that will supplement any curriculum.
Access: OER Commons
PBS - Social Studies has a wide range of resources for students from its various programs. The most useful is likely the companion Web sites for the American Experience documentary series examining important events and people in American history. Each site includes resources such as descriptions of the events, biographies of key figures, primary source documents, interactive maps and transcripts of the film. Also visit the American Masters series for biographies of historical figures.
Access: PBS - Social Studies
Access: Pinterest for Social Studies
Primary Source promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to people and cultures throughout the world. In partnership with teachers, scholars, and the broader community, Primary Source provides learning opportunities and curriculum resources for K-12 educators. By introducing global content, Primary Source shapes the way teachers and students learn, so that their knowledge is deeper and their thinking is flexible and open to inquiry.
Access: Primary Source
- The U.S. House of Representatives’ The House Explained page provides details on the legislative process, explaining how laws are made.
- The Center on Congress at Indiana University offers interactive simulations that explain how Congress operates. It includes video and audio from congressmen and others.
- The Library of Congress’ THOMAS is a database of congressional activity dating back to 1973. It was retired in July, 2016. Thomas.loc.gov and www.thomas.gov direct visitors to Congress.gov.
- Law Library blog post
You can find bills, treaties and the congressional record, and track current activity on the House and Senate floor.
- The Library of Congress’ A Century of Lawmaking provides the records of the Continental Congress, Constitutional Convention and first 43 sessions of Congress (1789-1873).
- The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress offers short biographies of every senator and representative in U.S. history.
- Dulcinea has partnered with LineTime on this History App for iPad and iPhone to enable students to view the course of modern history on a timeline, and to drill down into each century, decade or year.
- The Constitutional Rights Foundation offers a wide array of resources, including lesson plans and enrichment texts, on constitutional issues designed to help students understand the Constitution and become better citizens.
- The National Archives’ Charters of Freedom explains the making of and impact of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. It includes images of the documents, biographies of the framers, and fun facts.
- The University of Chicago’s Founders’ Constitution is an anthology of 18th century writings on the debate over the creation of the Constitution. The works are organized by sections of the Constitution, making it easy to understand how opinion of each founding father influenced the formation of the Constitution.
Get historical background and analysis of important news stories in finding Dulcinea’s Beyond the Headlines section.
- The Morningside Center’s Teachable Moment offers lesson plans on current events for K-12.
- The Newseum provides a look at today’s front page of 827 newspapers in 77 countries, giving students the chance to see how differently news is covered from city to city and country to country.
- PBS Frontline’s Teacher Center is a collection of lesson plans and activities to accompany Frontline documentaries in the classroom
- The Guardian’s Interactive Guides give interactive overviews of significant issues occurring in the world today.
- Practical Money Skills offers financial education for kids, adults and teachers. Developed by Visa in partnership with consumer advocates, educators and financial institutions, the site contains articles, advice, financial planning tools and links to financial education material.
- Fed101 is an interactive Web site of the Federal Reserve that’s full of information about how the government guides the economy. There are several lessons, activities, games and quizzes for student enrichment and general knowledge. Click on Teacher Resources for an excellent economics search engine.
- Council for Economic Education offers 20 American standards for teaching economics, with links to lesson plans and benchmarks for each one.
- PBS’ Social Studies section contains more than 700 resources on economics aimed at high school students, including lesson plans, videos, online activities and more.
- The Economics Search Engine is a custom search engine that only searches 23,000 Web sites recommended by associations of economists.
Find more resources for students, teachers and parents in the findingDulcinea Web Guide to Education and its many sub-guides.
- National Geographic’s Xpeditions has hundreds of educator-created lesson plans written by educators that complement the site’s interactive maps and tools.
- The University of Oregon’s Mapping History provides interactive maps explaining events in American, European, Latin American and African history.
- The CIA World Factbook gives an overview of every country in the world, with maps, flags and facts on physical and political geography.
- TravelPod had a fast-paced geography game that quizzes students on world capitals, location of popular cities, world flags and more. It is no longer available. You might find some of its opportunities in Travel Ark.
- Ohio State University’s eHistory has a massive collection of famous documents, letters collections and online books. The highlight of the collection is the Official Records of the Civil War, made up of material from the military departments of the Union and Confederacy.
- Yale Law School’s Avalon Project provides a database of documents such as laws, treaties, declarations, constitutions, speeches and statements from ancient history to the 21st century. Documents are organized by time period and by topic.
- Oklahoma State University’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties is a seven-volume collection of laws, treaties and executive orders regarding Native Americans between 1778 and 1970.
- HistoryNet is home to more than 5,000 articles published in Weider History Group magazines, which include American History, Military History, Wild West and World War II.
- American Heritage makes many of its articles written since its 1954 debut available online. We are unable to access at this time as the magazine has ceased publication.
- BBC History Magazine offers multiple resources, including blogs and short features.
- History Now is a quarterly journal put out by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History that is designed for history students and teachers. The journal includes lessons plans and its articles include lists of books and online resources on the topic at hand.
- History Today is a weekly British magazine published since 1951; its Web site offers virtually all of its articles written since 1980.
- George Mason University’s History Matters features 100 Web-based assignments, examples of course syllabi, advice on how to evaluate Web sites and essays on how to utilize primary sources.
- SCORE (Schools of California Online Resources for Education) provides both unit and lesson plans for social studies classes, arranged by topic and grade level.
- Teaching History with Technology offers a wealth of resources for incorporating the Internet into the history curriculum, including these innovative projects.
- TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is home to inspiring, amusing and cool talks with innovative thinkers and leaders. Learn about emerging technologies, the fashion world, religion, medicine, and much more from the Web site of the TED Prize and annual TED Conference.
- The Mike Wallace Interviews was a series of prime-time television interviews conducted between 1957 and 1960. Wallace donated 65 interviews conducted between 1957 and 1958 to the University of Texas, which hosts video and transcripts of the conversations.
- Charlie Rose has interviewed hundreds of “America’s best thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers” since his show first aired in 1991.
- The Paris Review hosts an archive of interview excerpts with authors dating back to the 1950s.
- iCivics offers civics lessons created by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The page offers resources for middle school students and their teachers, such as printable games and writing assignments.
- The Government Printing Office’s Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids explains in a kid-friendly manner how the U.S. government works; lessons are divided by grade level.
- The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School is the best source for public legal information; it links to government sources for federal, state and international laws, and provides easily searchale text of U.S. codes.
- The University of Pittsburgh’s JURIST provide news and commentary of the latest developments in the legal world, as well as providing a wide range of court and government documents.
- University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law professor Douglas Linder has compiled research pages for more than 50 of the most famous trials in history, dating back to the trial of Socrates 399 B.C. Each page includes a detailed account of the events of and leading up to the trial, court documents such as witness testimony and trial excerpts, and other primary documents such as newspaper accounts and letters.
- The Google News Archive searches historical newspapers, most of which cannot be found elsewhere in Google. A student studying the rise of Adolph Hitler could review these newspaper results from 1933 to 1937.
- Time magazine provides users with access to its impressive article archive dating back to 1923, enabling students to search for articles .
- The Times of London organizes its archives through topics such as War & Revolution, Politics & Civil Rights, and Exploration.
- The New York Times offers free articles dating from 1851-1922 and 1987-present.
Find more great sites for primary sources in the findingDulcinea Web Guide to U.S. History and its numerous sub-guides.
- Letters of Note offers a digital copy of an historic handwritten note each day, along with a transcript. It includes this ingenious method of communication during the Revolutionary War.
- The University of Virginia’s “The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War” chronicles two counties, Augusta County, Va., and Franklin County, Penn., contrasting their experiences from John Brown’s Raid to the end of Reconstruction.
- The University of Michigan’s “Spy Letters of the American Revolution” featutres spy letters written by both American and British forces. It includes stories about the letters, maps of the routes they traveled, and biographies of those who sent and received the letters.
- Archiving Early America presents a wide array of primary source material on 18th century America, such as newspapers, maps, writings and portraits. It also includes Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography.
- The University of North Carolina’s “North American Slave Narratives” is a collection of slave biographies and autobiographies published as books or pamphlets.
- The Bradshaw Foundation’s Journey of Mankind features a virtual global journey of modern man over the last 160,000 years.
- Simon Fraser University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology’s “A Journey to a New Land” tells the story of the first people to arrive in the Americas.
- National Geographic’s Atlas of the Human Journey examines early human’s migration from Africa to all parts of the globe.
- Carnegie Mellon University’s Universal Digital Library holds more than 1 million works from many different fields in a dozen languages.
- Tufts University’s Perseus Digital Library is the best source for Greek and Latin texts, as well as Germanic texts and Renaissance works.
- Project Gutenberg provides more than 30,000 eBooks from the public domain.
- Librivox offers text and audio recordings of more than 3,000 public domain books and other works.
Read biographies of more than 1,000 interesting and influential figures in history on SweetSearch Biographies.
- Michigan State University’s Vincent Voice Library is home to over 40,000 hours of audio from more than 100,000 “political and cultural leaders and minor players in the human drama,” dating back to 1888.
- PBS’ “People’s Century” is a 26-part documentary detailing the events of the 20th century through interviews with average citizens. The Web site includes interview clips and lesson plans.
- The Chicago History Museum hosts the work of famed oral historian Studs Terkel from his various radio shows. The site features audio interviews and essays on the importance of oral history.
- The Library of Congress’ “Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories” features audio of 20th century interviews of 23 former slaves.
- The Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement features testimony of members of Civil Rights organizations such as CORE, NAACP, SCLC and SNCC, who submit stories about their experiences or write commentary on the movement and current events.
- Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Archive Oral History Project features interviews of soldiers and civilians from the U.S. and North and South Vietnam.
- “What did you do in the war, Grandma?” and “The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968” were projects conducted by South Kingstown (R.I.) High School students who interviewed family members about their experiences during significant times in U.S. history. The projects are great examples of how young students can contribute to the study of history.
- The National Archives’ Our Documents created a list of the 100 most important documents in U.S. history. Each entry contains an image of the document, a transcript and an essay explaining the document’s significance.
- The National Archives’ Teaching With Documents section presents lessons plans that explain historical events through primary documents.
- Milestone Documents offers famous primary source texts with expert analysis and lessons plans, some at no charge, others for a small fee.
- EyeWitness to History features first-person accounts of prominent events in U.S. and world history, along with a simple explanation of the event’s importance.
- Awesome Stories tells stories from history with links to primary sources.
- The Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog has dozens of collections of photographs, illustrations, posters and other images. Highlights of the catalog include Ansel Adams’s photos of Japanese-American internees and Matthew Brady’s Civil War photographs.
- Google’s Life photo archive is home to photos that were featured in Life magazine and many owned by the magazine that were never published.
- Dartmouth professor Hany Farid examines photographs through history that have been doctored, usually for propaganda or to conform to societal norms.
- HarpWeek examines presidential elections, the Civil War, Reconstruction and other events of 19th century America through the articles and cartoons of Harper’s Weekly.
- The U.K. National Archives examines the use of political cartoons throughout world history.
- Daryl Cagle’s Teachers’ Guide for the Professional Cartoonists Index offers lesson plans for using modern editorial cartoons in the classroom.
- The Web sites of 13 U.S. presidential libraries are linked to by the National Archives. In this libraries, you can find resources such as Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats.
- The University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs is the best resource for studying U.S. presidents. It provides detailed biographies of each president, along with profiles of his cabinet, a collection of speeches, and links to the most comprehensive sources for private and public papers.
- The Official Web site of the White House lets you listen to the President's weekly video address, read transcripts of White House press briefings, find the names of all current Cabinet members, and more. It also provides biographies of every president.
- Dulcinia's Web Research Tutorial, a research-based, multimedia tutorial that teaches effective web research skills to both educators and students.
- Teaching High School Psychology is a blog moderated by five high school psychology teachers. Aside from the daily blog posts, it links to a great wealth of resources, including outstanding school Web sites, “must read” books, and other links.
- Teaching Social Psychology is an up-to-date collection assembled by a college professor of activities and exercises for teaching social psychology.
- The American Psychological Association offers a whole page of high school teacher resources, including links to lesson plans, “pacing calendars” and local speakers' bureaus.
- American Rhetoric is dedicated to archiving American speeches, lectures, sermons, interviews and “other important media events.” Its “Online Speech Bank” contains full text, audio and video for more than 5,000 speeches.
- Historical Voices is a fully searchable online database of spoken word collections spanning the 20th century.
- The Oyez Project at Northwestern University allows you to listen to the Supreme Court justices as they deliberate cases, providing a complete source of all audio recorded since the installation of a recording system in the Court in 1955.
- The Supreme Court Historical Society has a voluminous history of every court, including a timeline of justices with information about each one. There are sections on the current Court and previous “Homes of the Court,” plus quizzes and videos.
- The U.S. Army Center of Military History provides in-depth accounts of U.S. military operations from a variety of military sources.
- The National Security Archive is an independent institute located at The George Washington University that presents documents to the public after they have been declassified by the government.
- History Animated provides easy-to-follow animations of key battles in the Revolutionary War, Civil War and Pacific theatre of World War II, with a short description of each battle.
- The National Parks Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is a database that makes it easy to find personal records Civil War soldiers, sailors, prisoners and regiments.
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has created a range of Web sites designed for the needs of students and teachers. It includes basic surveys of U.S. and world history, sites that teach students to use primary sources, and sites that provide lesson plans and ideas for teachers. It also features several Web sites of archives and exhibits.
The Smithsonian Institution has a wide variety of exhibitions and collections on American history and culture.
Access: The Smithsonian Institution
Discover this wonderful blog that allows all social studies related teacher to find something that just might fit into a lesson. Here you will find some fun reading, and a lot of engaging ideas.
The Iowa Department of Education provides information on social studies requirements for teachings, laws and regulations, social studies in the Iowa Core, US Senate Youth Program, National History Days and web sites.
The Sports Illustrated Vault offers all the magazine’s articles since its 1954 debut.
Access: The Sports Illustrated Vault
The students of Mrs. Gold in Colorado Spring, CO found this site helpful in their geography studies. They believe it needed to be on our website to help other kids studying geography, too!
Access: Take a Seat Road Trip Geography
On a recent visit to this site there were close to 80,000 social studies and history resources available.. It could then be narrowed down to almost 10,000 free social studies and history resources. The supplied link goes to those almost 10,000. With this many, it is really possible to find something. Best of all, use the keyword search and narrow it down more. If free is desired… be sure to turn on that filter.
Access: Teachers Pay Teachers
Check out these videos to use in your classroom.
Access: TedLessons Worth Sharing
Haley Warner, a junior volunteer webmaster and a volunteer for an after-school program, has suggested this site to help students like Ainsley with geography! Welcome, Ainsley and Haley!
Access: Travel - Geography for Kids
The Iowa Department of Education provides the following for implementation of the social studies standards:
Access: Understanding and Implement Social Studies - Iowa Department of Education
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) recently released guidance for states to use in enhancing their standards for rigor in civics, economics, geography, and history in K-12 schools.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has scanned every issue of Freedom’s Journal, the first newspaper to be owned and operated by African-Americans.
Access: The Wisconsin Historical Society