Teaching with Primary Sources

Montana Historical Society sent this bulletin at 12/29/2025 07:00 AM MST

Teaching Montana History

Of special interest to: Teachers--especially upper grade teachers--looking for primary-source based lessons and other resources

Re: Where to find lesson plans, teaching guides, primary sources, and primary source sets

Donna McCrae, Head of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Montana Mansfield Library, pulled together this very handy list of websites that support Teaching with Primary Sources for a presentation she gave at the MFPE Educator Conference. She gave me permission to share it with you all.

SELECT WEBSITES WITH TEACHING GUIDES / LESSON PLANS

Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets – Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature and culture developed by educators, complete with teaching guides for classroom use.

Library of Congress Classroom Materials – Curated thematic primary source sets, lesson plans and example presentations.

DocsTeach - Features activities from educators from around the country based on documents found in the National Archives holdings. Filter by historical era, thinking skill, activity type and grade level.

Smithsonian for Educators - Online lesson plans, interactive activities, and multimedia materials, tailored to various grade levels and subjects.

EDSITEment: The Best of the Humanities on the Web - National Endowment for the Humanities site with lesson plans, teacher’s guides and media resources. Includes ideas and activities focused on local history.

Digital Inquiry Group – Curriculum designed to engage students in historical inquiry. Each Reading Like a Historian lesson revolves around a central historical question and features a set of primary documents designed for groups of students with a range of reading skills. This site requires a log-in.

Montana Historical Society Resources for Educators – Resources organized by skill level and by subject. Lesson plans are available for several subjects including civics, geography, art, mining history, and Indian Education for All.

Newberry Library Classroom Resources - Digital Collections for the Classroom support key history and literature learning goals in critical thinking, analysis, close reading, and visual literacy. Includes lesson plans, skills lessons and contextual essays.

National Park Service Teaching with Museum Collections – Includes lesson plans for teaching with objects. Regional lesson plans include Grant Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, Nez Perce National Historic Park and Yellowstone National Park.

National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places – Location, theme and state-based lesson plans. Includes guides for using and writing place-based ‘classic’ and ‘lightening’ plans.

SELECT WEBSITES WITH PRIMARY SOURCE CONTENT

Library of Congress Digital Collections – curated sets of digitized content from the Library of Congress collections. Formats include (but are not limited to) photos, maps, pamphlets, audio, and moving images.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) - Over 52 million keyword-searchable images, texts, video and sound files. Curated exhibitions with primary source content accompanied by contextual essays.

Digitized Montana Newspapers – Landing page, hosted by the Montana Historical Society, for linking to digitized newspapers available via the public access portal for Newspapers.com, Chronicling America, and several other Montana newspapers.

Chronicling America - A searchable digital collection of historic newspapers from across the United States dating from 1736 to 1963. Browse and keyword search options. Full image.

Montana History Portal – Digitized content contributed by Montana libraries, museums, archives, and cultural institutions. Contents include maps, photographs, rare books, historic documents, school yearbooks, diaries and letters, oral histories, audio and video clips, paintings, illustrations and art. Curated Digital Exhibits pair primary sources around a theme or topic with narrative text.

David Rumsey Map Collection – Over 142,000 digitized maps from around the world from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

Teaching Montana History is edited (and mostly written) by MTHS Outreach and Interpretation Program Manager Martha Kohl.