69 Social Studies Resources to Enhance Your Teaching

History is much more than distant stories—it’s a collection of narratives that shape, inspire, and provide both reminders and reality checks. History is meant to be exciting; some might even compare it to gossip on a grand scale, where years later, noteworthy events and interesting people dominate the classroom news cycle.

Here’s the latest: Rutgers Alternate Route teachers are helping each other and teachers everywhere by sharing their favorite resources to elevate social studies instruction. If you’re seeking creative lesson plans, thought-provoking discussion prompts, current events, national art, and more that bring history and civics to life, you’re in the right place. Whether you want inquiry-based lessons from the National Council for Social Studies, interactive video tools like Edpuzzle or PBS LearningMedia, or creative project ideas and simulations, you’ll find resources here to make your social studies lessons more dynamic and memorable.

With the right tools, you can spark curiosity, deepen understanding, and ensure every history lesson leaves a lasting impression on your students.

Active Classroom
This site allows you to teach a topic by giving brief overviews, activities and evaluation questions. You can customize the lesson by using specific portions of the lesson, which is a great way to differentiate. (Avion T. 9-12)

American Social History Project
This site provides excellent resources regarding a timely, well-tailored social studies curriculum. It provides historical content that aims to break the mold and appeal to a diverse body of students. (Dash C. 6-8)

American Battlefield Trust
I find this website to be very resourceful when detailing specific events that pertain to my unit in the Civil War. They have comprehensive videos and slides about very specific events during the Civil War. I must admit this is a website that is tailored to specific content, but if you do teach the American Revolution/ Civil War, it can provide slides to take some of the load off your shoulders when it comes to creating content. (Denver P. K-5;6-8)

American Panorama
Highly interactive site that combines American History with maps. (Jonathan P. K-5;6-8)

The American Yawp
Many charter schools do not use textbooks, including mine, which is not conducive to all students' learning. The American YAWP is an open-source textbook that will give students an additional resource for learning. (Jared B. 6-8)

Amistad Project
NJ advocates for racially diverse lessons, and there's no better resource than Amistad. I was fortunate to be part of the summer group and use this site still when I want to create diverse lessons. (Lucy F. 9-12)

BetterLessons
It shows trending lessons along with the comments of other educators to create a helpful environment. (Jose L. 9-12)

Big History Project
Has full units and activities for social studies teacher (Marisa M. K-5)

Blooket
Helps create interactive and competitive assessments. (Gonzalez M. 6-8)

Character Count
It provides resources to help students with their character as individuals in order to create a healthier and safer school environment in which scholars will thrive and want to learn. (Alexis M. 6-8)

CNN 10
CNN 10 is a news site published by CNN designed specifically for middle school students. It publishes daily news recaps that are perfect to show to my students to give them a structured, age-appropriate, and meaningful opportunity to learn about current events in class. (Jacob S. 6-8)

CommonLit
CommonLit is an amazing catalog of non-fiction and fiction texts. It is easy to grab an item and distribute it to students as homework. (Adam H. 6-8)

C-SPAN Classroom
This website features lesson plans and videos of current and past lawmakers. (Lawrence N. 9-12)

Choices Program (Brown University)
This site is connected to the department of history at Brown University and is a self-funded organization that works to increase access to curriculum content for U.S secondary schools. I have access to this site via Clever (paid for by my district). (Bennett K. 9-12)

Common Sense Education
Has a tab for parents and a tab for educators. It offers a variety of resources (both paid and free, tells you which, and what these resources are useful for, as well as strategies and so much more. (Alexis M. 6-8)

Crash Course
They're the best! While I show their videos in class from time to time, I actually mostly use them to refresh /my/ memory on topics I am preparing to teach but haven't reviewed in a while. Their hosts do a fantastic job of delivering lots of essential information in a way that is both concise and amusing. And the breadth of topics that they cover is also very impressive, making it useful for just about any middle or high school teacher. (Giovanni O. 9-12)

DBQ Online
The benefit of this site is that my co-teachers and I pull DBQ assessments from this website. This website provides great resources for our students to write DBQ essays. (John D. 9-12)

Differentiated Instruction
I like how it addresses the psychology of differentiation. It also talks about interest as a way of differentiation. (Samantha A. 9-12)

Diffit
Diffit allows me to adjust the reading level of a reading passage for class to the different levels of students in my class. This has been an AWESOME tool to differentiate instruction. I have three gen ed classes, an ICR class, and a G&T class. Diffit has allowed me to find a single passage and then use that passage for all 98 of my students by adjusting the reading level accordingly. (Thomas S. 6-8)

Digital History
Digital History has primary documents and questions to go along with them (Marisa M. K-5)

DIG- Digital inquiry Group (formerly called SHEG)
The main benefit of this site is that it has entire lessons, including PowerPoint, teacher and student materials and multiple languages. I found this very helpful as a first-year teacher who doesn't have time to develop entire lessons from scratch every week. It also has several DBQ-style assignments, which would be helpful as an activity included in a larger lesson. The only downside is that the PDFs are not so easy to edit, so I often have to copy and paste the PDFs into my Google Doc versions. (Andre R. 9-12)

Discovery Education
Various professional learning resources are available, including lesson plans and news stories (content). (Kamika B. 9-12)

DK findout
The site offers interactive lessons on a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to history, math, science, sports, and allows students to explore topics on their terms while also learning how to research larger topics in a smaller environment. (Eric V. K-5;6-8)

DocsTeach
This site has access to the National Archives and contains many important primary sources, and even guides in how to use them. It also contains a template for each document and allows teachers to make custom lessons out of primary sources for free. (Michael P. 9-12)

Ducksters
Ducksters is a great repository of information on different topics in history. I use Ducksters, in conjunction with Diffit, to give my students readings for class. I will then either use the comprehension questions that Diffit provides or make my own as an assessment to check for comprehension for my students. (Thomas S. 6-8)

Ed Helper
This site offers reading comprehension on all subjects, printable sheets and answer keys, and options to create your own worksheets. It offers all grade levels, different monthly themes, and units. The downfall, there is a subscription cost. (Nicole B. 6-8)

EdPuzzle
This site provides students with videos and questions that give in-depth detail on specific areas of study (Grant A. 6-8)

Edutopia
Offers a wealth of articles, videos, and tools on a wide range of topics, including classroom management, instructional strategies, and technology integration. (Tyrese C. 9-12)

Effective Strategies on How to Partner Students
This website has 7 different strategies on how to effectively partner students. The website gives examples for different ways to partner and group students, for example academically, socially, and also in high-med-low. This is a great resource for differentiation. (Valerie. K 6-8)

Ellii
The site is great because it keeps questions and content simple for those who are learning how to speak English. I use it for my ESL classes, and it has great content like quizzes and surveys for the students to complete. The questions are asked in a way for students to be able to figure out the translation, and the site also has lessons to learn English. (Duncan M. 9-12)

Facing History
I've used this for the civil rights movement and Jim Crow ideas. I like how they try to make it relevant for students instead of just listing information. (Brittany T. 9-12)

Flocabulary
I also teach 7th and 8th grade, and Flocabulary presents information to students in a poetic way that helps students engage and maintain the information that we are discussing. (William W. 6-8)

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
This site is an excellent resource for history teachers, particularly those who teach American history. The website houses the Gilder Lehrman Collection, which is an archival database of primary and secondary sources throughout American history. The website boasts that over "85,000 documents" are available at the fingertips of teachers across the country with membership. The website also provides lesson ideas and detailed lesson plans to further assist educators in implementing these resources in the classroom. (Nicholas D. 9-12)

The Great Courses
Provides different courses from different professors (Thomas M. 6-8)

Historypin
This site gives details of historical events around the world, both far and local. (Dash C. 6-8)

History Channel
This site helps me with lesson planning, including interesting facts that I like to include to make the lesson more interesting. (Daniel C. 6-8)

iCivics
ICivics is a free website that has an entire American History scope and sequence from the pre-colonial time period all the way up to the current day. They have supplemental lesson plans on various topics that come with Lesson Plans, TMDs, Answer Sheets, and Student Worksheets. This website is the most beneficial website I have found this year to help me create full and comprehensive lessons for my students. (Denver P. K-5;6-8)

Illuminate Education
Illuminate is a great resource for building assessments for students. It is easy to categorize questions by standard and assess data. (Adam H. 6-8)

The Jigsaw Classroom
This site is a great resource for how to do effective jigsaws in the classrooms. It gives 9 steps starting from how to diversify the groups, assigning a leader, creating expert groups, and finally allowing the students to present material. This is a rough model of how I created the jigsaw in my classroom. (Valerie K. 6-8)

Khan Academy
Khan Academy has all kinds of material that can help reinforce the students' understanding of subject matter, and is easy to share. In most cases, students are already familiar with it. It is a great resource for reviewing material as well. (Peter O. 6-8)

Library of Congress
The Library of Congress's website has an extremely large database of American history primary sources. This is influential for my 8th-grade social studies classroom during our American history units, as all of my lessons are built around analyzing primary and secondary sources. (Jacob S. 6-8)

Magic School AI tools
Offers numerous tools for teachers, including text leveling (which I use the most), lesson plan creator, video summarizer, etc. (Eric V. K-5;6-8)

Mr. Donn's Site
It is specifically for social studies; however, I have used this site throughout my lessons as they are effective and credible. (Gonzalez M. 6-8)

National Council for the Social Studies Teacher
It's a connective resource, and it provides insight for lessons & PD. (Lucy F. 9-12)

National Gallery of Art
Over 50,000 pieces of art are available to enliven any presentation, and offer glimpses into life at the time it was painted (Lawrence N. 9-12)

National Geographic
It has a lot of information about the history and cultures of the present and the past. It also has activities, games, and more. (Elisa E. 9-12)

National Speech & Debate Association
There are sample lesson plans, instructional materials, and topic guides for helping students navigate difficult conversations. The website also offers up-to-date information about the most widely used debate structures. (Ben M. 9-12)

Nearpod
Nearpod allows teachers to create slideshows that require instant feedback from students. This can be a much better method of creating presentations that guarantee that all students are attentive and engaged in the class. (Matthew R. 9-12)

New Visions for Public Schools
Provides grade-level DBQs for various topics in world/global history. (Elijah B. 9-12)

The New York Times' Learning Network
This site offers articles, opinion pieces, and topics appropriate for high schoolers studying debate. There are resources for helping teachers bring current events into the classroom. (Ben M. 9-12)

Newsela
I like this website for articles for students to read. I like the idea of how they can do level reading for students who might need it. They also include lesson plan ideas. Also, depending on the article, you can add a quiz and or writing prompt, which gives them something to be responsible for to make sure they read. (Brittany T. 9-12)

Pear Deck
Pear Deck gives teachers tools to create more interactive lessons and keeps students engaged (Matthew R. 9-12)

Pro-Con
The site has tons of debatable topics to get students discussing and learning how to form arguments. Students can be assigned an article or pick one for themselves and present. (Christopher W. 9-12)

Salem Witch Museum
The site offers online tours, sources, and an interactive scapegoat generator to show parallels in history (Robert T. 9-12)

Savass Realize
You have access to a textbook that has a variety of activities you can use to teach about different subjects. (Arman A. 9-12)

Seterra Geography Games
This one is a bit more specific to social studies, but I personally think knowing geography is very important, so I use this site to periodically review it with my students. There are tons of different options to adjust difficulty, and I've found it to be very helpful with enforcing memorization in a low-pressure way. (Giovanni O. 9-12)

Slido
Slido is a great resource for our class as we use it for our Do-Now. Students can log in to Slido and answer a question that is posted on the board. (John D. 9-12)

Smithsonian Institute
The Smithsonian offers nuanced views of History for students to read and contemporary issues based on historical events that relate to my curriculum. (Daniel K. 6-8)

Smithsonian's History Explorer
Developed by the National Museum of American History in partnership with the Verizon Foundation, History Explorer offers a wide variety of educational materials covering American history. These include learning activities, museum artifacts, teacher resources, interactives, and many more. (J. Michael M. K-5)

Stanford History Education Group
Note: This website is actively changing its name to the Digital Inquiry Group. I have found this website particularly useful for its curriculum series titled "How to Read Like a Historian." I like to start the school year with lessons on how to analyze sources (which is an essential skill to have in a history classroom). The Stanford History Education Group does an outstanding job providing students with useful reading strategies, understanding the importance of contextualization in history, sourcing, and close reading. The website also focuses on helping educators to get their students to look at history beyond memorizing facts. Learning how to think critically and support claims is also incorporated in this curriculum series. (Nicholas D. 9-12)

Teacher's Discovery
This site provides animated and interactive activities for students to help with the lessons. (Daniel C. 6-8)

Teachers First
Teachers First has a large amount of material available to teachers in a searchable database by subject and age level on a variety of subjects. (Peter O. 6-8)

Teachers Pay Teachers
After making an account, you can search any topic and grade level, and there are lessons, worksheets, PowerPoint, etc. to download. Some do need payment, but there are plenty that are free. (Christopher W. 9-12)

Teaching History
This website has tons of materials and content specifically for teachers and allows for choosing content and materials by grade level, which is useful for any level social studies teacher. This site is also free to access. (Michael P. 9-12)

Teaching People's History
TPH offers comprehensive primary and secondary documents and interactive readings and is aligned with a diversity and equity approach by sharing stories on minority missions and beliefs. (Daniel K. 6-8)

TED-Ed on YouTube
The use of TED-Ed videos is engaging for students and very informative. (Especially the Salem Witch Trials video linked above) (Robert T. 9-12)

Thug Notes
The character hosts the series in an "original gangster" style in the usage of African-American Vernacular English (Robert T. 9-12)

We Are Teachers

This is a free site, which is very beneficial. It provides classroom ideas, inspiration to teach, free printables, and discussion questions. (Nicole B. 6-8)

What Differentiated Instruction Really Means
This article talks about real differentiation! I like how it gives real strategies. (Samantha A. 9-12)

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