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A 3000+ Document Library: A Blessing or a Curse?

by California Digital News


As Publications Manager at Teaching American History, I frequently hear the following from our teacher partners:

  • I love teaching with primary sources!  But which one should I use?
  • Your website is great!  But I feel overwhelmed when I look all the documents.
  • My district has dropped our textbook and we are switching to primary sources.  Where do I even start?
  • I can’t expect a high school student to read an entire Federalist Paper!?
 Document collection page featuring document thumbnails and dropdown menu with a thematic table of contents, introduction, related resources and study questions.

We get it.  There is a dizzying number of websites out there that promote the use of primary sources.  Some even supply educator notes, videos, colorful presentations, classroom activities and reading guides.  All you need to replace the textbook . . . except that you wind up literally replacing the textbook!

At TAH, we know teachers are the true classroom experts.  Unlike textbooks, we won’t tell you what to teach or how to teach it.   Instead, we’ll provide you with the materials and education you need to teach the complex and sensitive topics that always come up in the secondary social studies classroom.

To that end, we’ve made all our Core Document volume series available as standalone digital collections that can be accessed here.  Here’s a sampling of the available titles:

Use our study questions as classroom conversation starters, activity guides, or as assessment tools.  Question A requires close reading of the document; Question B requires comparison between multiple documents from this collection.

Each of these collections includes an introduction, a thematic table of contents, study questions, and a set of introduced and excerpted documents.  All pages are optimized for classroom projection as well as individual use.  Designed for ease of navigation for both teachers and students, our digital document collections are a classroom-ready resource around which you can base instruction.

Try out our document collections in your classroom today!





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