31 Resources Social Studies/History Teachers Use to Help Students Learn

History and social studies provide students with the essential knowledge, intellectual skills, and civic values necessary to become informed and responsible citizens in a culturally diverse society. With the right approach, teachers can bring history alive, make world events more relevant, and inspire student curiosity about geography, economics, and politics. That's why New Jersey Social teachers enrolled with Rutgers Alternate Route are sharing the go-to resources they use to plan great lessons and enhance their teaching for students in their classes.

American Battlefield Trust  
If you are teaching the Civil War, this site has many valuable resources such as worksheets, videos, and recommendations for lesson plans. (Matthew S, 9-12) 


AmericanHistoryMrB 
Solid info on American history-related matters. (Paul B, 6-8;9-12) 


Archives.Gov 
Excellent resource for documents connected to American history. (Paul B, 6-8;9-12) 


CommonLit 
CommonLit provides informational historical texts while also assessing students ELA strengths. CommonLit allows teachers to track standards and student progress over time. (Samantha P, 6-8) 

A full library of free material for teachers. (Daniel A, 6-8) 


Edsitement! The Best of the Humanities on the Web 
This resource is a hub that includes links to many other resources by topic. The benefit is that you can get a quick bird's eye overview of possible resources out there based on the topic you are teaching. (Marjorie W, 9-12)


Flocabulary 
Engaging tool for reinforcing/introducing a topic. Builds vocab and comprehension (Konstantinos K, 6-8) 


Future Educators  
This site explains why It’s important to engage students in learning, make classes interactive, give students choices and more. (Tracy A, K-5) 


Gilder Lehrman Institute 
This institute has innumerable resources for history teachers, including short background essays written by historians, lots of primary sources, lesson plans for a wide variety of grade levels, and an entire site dedicated to the AP United States History curriculum. It has been an invaluable resource to me. (Raechel L, 9-12) 

This offers a ton of free resources and lesson plans about American history. They lean heavily into the use of primary documents and host many virtual events where you can get PD credits. (Matthew S, 9-12) 


History Classroom 
This site can benefit teachers with resources such as educational guides, learning tools and links to other educational content.  The website has a link to their History podcast, study guides, this day in history, as well as biographies for a variety of different history classes. The website is also extremely user-friendly with additional resources for the teacher such as shows, history classics and short videos. (Ian M, 9-12) 


iCivics 
Lesson Plans, Materials, Games, etc. (Olajuwon S, 9-12) 


IXL Social Studies  
IXL provides a mix of writing-in answers, fill-in-the-blanks, word banks, multiple-choice questions, drag and click, etc. Overall, IXL provides students with an additional learning tool outside of the information being taught in class to help guide students with further instruction on any relevant topic to ensure that they are getting ALL of the information they need. (Tyler B, 6-8) 


JSTOR 
I'm constantly reading scholarly journal articles, so I can personally have the best understanding of the content, such that I can perfect my ability to simplify it. (Benjamin M, 9-12) 

This is an outstanding site for academic articles. On many assignments, I required students to use at least one JSTOR article as a source due to the academic rigor of most of its content. (Brian W, 9-12) 


Kami App 
Allows for students to edit PDF documents. (Olajuwon S, 9-12) 


Library of Congress 
This site offers the ability for my history class to research historical primary sources. It also offers classroom/teaching aids. (Anthony P, 9-12) 


McGraw Hill Educators Social Studies School 
This site is an online textbook that you can actually assign work to students. All of the information and work is in one place. (Matthew B, 9-12) 


National Archives 
This site offers the ability for my history class to research historical primary sources. It also offers classroom/teaching aids. (Anthony P, 9-12) 


Nearpod 
Nearpod has a lot of videos and resources to supplement lessons. It has tons of videos on social studies content and it even includes worksheets and activities to go along with specific standards. (Bria N, K-5) 


Newsela 
Immersive documents for social studies that can be scaled to grade level. (Daniel A, 6-8) 


Next Gen Personal Finance 
This site is awesome, especially for middle school scholars. Finance is key to developing a lifestyle that provides proper work/life balance. This site provides lessons, interactive resources, answer keys, and assessments about a person's finances. We need to start the young scholars as early as possible and equip them with the proper knowledge of having their money work for them, instead of always working for the money. (Patrick D, 9-12) 


New Visions for Public Schools 
This site is excellent in providing additional resources to complement your lesson plan and lesson plan activities for your scholars. I have found this site to be really creative in providing lessons to scholars so that you can address all learning types, and also have effective assessments to ensure quality learning retention. (Patrick D, 9-12)

Seterra 
Educational game on geography (continents, oceans, countries, states, etc.) & identifying flags. (Konstantinos K, 6-8) 


Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora
This site is a map of images of African slavery throughout the 15-19th centuries. It is geographically organized and is a great resource to use in class and have students explore on their own in a lesson on slavery. (Raechel L, 9-12) 


Smithsonian's History Explorer 
This resource includes excellent sample lesson plans for teaching about primary sources. There are detailed descriptions of each kind of primary source along with worksheets for students to complete. There are also sample lessons including specific primary sources to teach. (Marjorie W, 9-12) 


Stanford History Education Group 
Lesson plans for important moments in history focused on primary source analysis and students drawing conclusions after considering not just context, but also the reliability of the source. (Samantha P, 6-8)  


Sutori 
Sutori allows students and teachers to build interactive timelines. It's another way to engage students in content and organize the information so students can see the progression of historical events. (Bria N, K-5) 


TCI 6-8 Social Studies Curriculum 
I use this site to create my lecture slides, get ideas for lesson concepts, and find images that are relevant to the topics I am teaching to help students visually. This website provides A LOT of structure from activities and vocabulary to NJSLS-designed questions for giving out quizzes and tests. You can even create your own assessments using the built-in tools from this website. (Tyler B, 6-8)  


Teaching American History 
This website has a lot of great resources for teachers who educate their students on United States history. The website allows teachers to choose based on a timeline in US history as well as upcoming seminars.  The website also has specific exhibits for interactive lessons on U.S.-specific subjects such as the election of 1800, the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers. (Ian M, 9-12) 


Third Space Learning 
There are so many useful and interesting teaching strategies found here! 1. Know your students and develop their respect 2.Appropriate use of summative and formative assessments 3. Direct instruction 4. Effective questioning techniques 5. Differentiation and so much more! (Tracy A, K-5) 


United States Census Data 
So, I honestly use this all the time to get demographic information on the neighborhood where I'm teaching, as I'm not from there. This is particularly useful when it comes to tailoring lessons based on existing knowledge and points of reference. (Benjamin M, 9-12) 


YouTube  
While some might deride it due to its endless problems. YouTube is still an outstanding source for entertaining and informative subject-relevant videos. (Brian W, 9-12) 


Zinn Education Project 
This site has a bunch of lesson plans posted by fellow history teachers. It is organized by time period so it makes it very user-friendly. (Matthew B, 9-12)  

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