Blogs > National Park Service: Teaching with Historic Places

Feb 21, 2011

National Park Service: Teaching with Historic Places



Historian David McCullough has written that experiencing places “helps in making contact with those who were there before,” and is “as necessary as the digging you do in libraries.” This website allows visitors to learn history and civics lessons from sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places—such as Layfayette Park in Washington, D.C., and Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park in Arkansas—without leaving their homes or classrooms.

To do so, the website presents more than 75 “classroom ready” lesson plans that include maps, primary source readings, photographs and other images, discussion questions, activities, and projects. The lessons—geared toward middle school students, but easily adaptable to high school or college survey courses—cover most of American history, but are particularly strong from the Civil War through the Civil Rights movement. Lesson plans can be browsed by location, theme, time period, skill (such as design/building oral history or historical preservation), and national standards for history.

“Professional Development” offers resources to enable educators to better train teachers in teaching about place, such as a list of upcoming workshops and presentations and a 150-item bibliography.


Explore other website reviews at History Matters.


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Celine Susie Celine - 3/8/2011

Thank you for this blog. That’s all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something that’s eye opening and important . Serveur vocal ; Bateau occasion .