History
Links and Resources that Help Support the Nebraska K-12 History Standards
*Please note that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Naturalization Test has been revised to now include 128 questions. A link to the test in its entirety can be found in the United States History section of this page.
Civil Rights Resources
This website, a project of “Teaching for Change”, provides lessons, handouts, news, and resources for teaching about the role of everyday people in the Civil Rights Movement. On the site, you can find handouts and more information about many of the lessons in our book, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching.
Lesson plans, created by teachers for teachers, to explore civil rights.
In 1954, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional and sparked a decade of groundbreaking civil rights activism and legislation. Using archival news footage, primary sources, and interview segments originally filmed for Eyes on the Prize, but not included in the final broadcast, this collection captures the voices, images, and events of the Civil Rights Movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America.
Stanford History Education Group
This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.
The African-American Civil Rights movement is typically seen as having taken place mostly in the 1950s and 60s, when a confluence of social and economic factors enabled political change. The movement, however, has much deeper roots, and thus our toolkit starts in the 19th Century, some two generations before leaders like King, Parks, and others were born. Viewing the Civil Rights movement as a generational one provides a broader perspective on the ideas and people at the foundation of this work to achieve “a more perfect union” for all Americans.
Civil Rights Done Right offers a detailed set of curriculum improvement strategies for classroom instructors who want to apply these practices. In five discrete steps, we identify specific suggestions and procedures for building robust, meaningful lessons that cultivate a deeper understanding of modern civil rights history.
Utah Education Network – Civil Rights
Links and resources for The Civil Rights Movement for years 1954 through 1971
Civil War Resources
Use the Museum for your classroom! The American Civil War Museum has compiled a number of free educational resources that cover a variety of topics to supplement your teaching of the Civil War in your classroom.
Civil War@Smithsonian is produced by the National Portrait Gallery and is dedicated to examining the Civil War through the Smithsonian Institution’s extensive and manifold collections. Since the war itself, 1861–1865, the institution has been actively collecting, preserving, and remembering America’s most profound national experience. Now through the World Wide Web, this site will significantly expand that mission, giving the public increased access to Smithsonian collections and archives.
The History Place – U.S. Civil War 1861-1865
A timeline of events related to the U.S. Civil War.
Library of Congress – Gettysburg Address
Drawn from the Library’s collections, the information gathers the key documents linked to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
General History Resources
The History Place – Irish Potato Famine
Beginning in 1845 and lasting for six years, the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused another million to flee the country.
This lesson emphasizes the struggle for Cherokee members to hold on to their land, government, and culture in the face of overwhelming pressure. The Cherokee Nation’s journey occurred between 1838 and 1839. In this lesson, students investigate a complicated story about how indigenous people negotiated through law and culture to preserve their identities. They will analyze pro-relocation and anti-relocation perspectives.
National Women’s History Alliance
In recognition of Equality Day, and following up on the “How Women Won the Vote” Gazette, the NWHP has posted on its website an extensive new List of Resources on suffragists and the suffrage movement. The Suffrage List offers “Cookbooks, Patterns, Songs and Surprises – Leads to a Variety of Votes for Women Resources,” with items in three dozen categories. The Reference Lists cite sixty-six biographies of suffragists, many which are recent, and more than 500 books and links that offer more information. There is material on each state’s suffrage history that adds to the information in the Gazette.
PBS Independent Lens – The New Americans
Follow a diverse group of immigrants and refugees as they leave their home and families behind and learn what it means to be new Americans in the 21st century.
Explore this website and hear all sides of the story—then you decide.
Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom.
University of Nebraska Lincoln – Human Rights in the U.S. & the International Community
This site is intended as a high school and post-secondary resource on human rights. Students may use the content, images, or web links for research projects. Teachers may pull out a unit, just a page at a time, or a lesson plan to fit in with their current courses.
Holocaust
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center
The mission of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is expressed in our founding principle: Remember the Past, Transform the Future. The Museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference. The Museum fulfills its mission through the exhibition, preservation and interpretation of its collections and through education programs and initiatives that foster the promotion of human rights and the elimination of genocide.
Institute for Holocaust Education
The Institute for Holocaust Education provides educational resources, workshops, survivor testimony, and integrated arts programming to students, educators, and the public.
We hear this all the time from teachers. The Jewish Virtual Library (JVL) is the most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history, politics and culture. With nearly 25,000 entries, the JVL is a one-stop shop for students of all ages interested in anything from anti-Semitism to Zionism. The Library has a vast global audience, reaching more than 30 million visitors — nearly 900,000 per month — from more than 200 countries and territories over the last three years (2014-16).
Yad Vashem’s – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies (ISHS), established in 1993, focuses upon – and excels in – providing quality Holocaust education to diverse audiences from Israel and across the world. In order to achieve this, the ISHS trains educators to teach the Holocaust, develops pedagogic and didactic tools to be utilized by teachers, and conducts educational workshops for youth and soldiers from Israel and abroad. The ISHS has developed a unique multi-disciplinary educational philosophy, based upon teaching the Holocaust in an age-appropriate manner. Educators are taught to bring their students safely in and safely out of the learning environment with the provision of age and level appropriate materials to aid the learning process.
Nebraska Studies Resources
NDE Links for Nebraska History
In an ongoing effort to promote the values, culture, and pride of Nebraska, this page seeks to connect Nebraska educators with resources and websites that are specific to our great state and local communities.
State of Nebraska Judicial Branch
The public’s perception of Nebraska’s justice system is directly linked to their daily interactions with the courts and the quality of the services they receive. Ensuring that judicial branch employees and others who work in our Nebraska courts have the training and education they need to effectively and professionally perform their duties is essential.
History Nebraska collects, preserves, and opens to all, the histories we share.
United States History
The Homestead Act of 1862 transformed the world. Millions were invited to file claims including, families, immigrants, single women, and freed slaves. Over 10 percent of the United States was homesteaded! The land, long inhabited by American Indian cultures, changed forever. Homesteaders created settlements and farms, drove industrial advancement, and built our nation chasing the American Dream.
Northern Illinois University – Lincoln/Net
In 1861 Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) became the United States’ sixteenth president. But before Lincoln became the nation’s chief executive, he led a fascinating life that sheds considerable light upon significant themes in American history. Lincoln/Net presents materials from Lincoln’s Illinois years (1830-1861), supplemented by resources from Illinois’ early years of statehood (1818-1829). Thus Lincoln/Net provides a record of Lincoln’s career, but it also uses his experiences as a lens through which users might explore and analyze his social and political context.
Jamestown Rediscovery education tours use a multidisciplinary approach to tell the story of the first permanent English settlement. Our specially trained guides incorporate the latest research, 3D printed artifacts, and a current historical narrative to provide a dynamic educational experience. Use our lesson plans to dig deeper into the history of Jamestown and introduce our recent research to your students in a fun and challenging manner. If you’re interested in our most recent finds, check out the Jamestown Rediscovery YouTube channel for our monthly “Dig Update” videos.
National Archives and Records Administration – Educator Resources
For educators who are now teaching remotely and homeschooling parents, we have several resources for online teaching and learning, and ways to connect with us at the National Archives.
PBS Lewis and Clark Classroom Resources
Although these lessons are written for middle level students, they do contain suggested extensions and adaptations to facilitate their use with elementary and secondary students. Each lesson in this unit can be used to achieve learning objectives in multiple subject areas. As a guide, however, we have grouped each lesson plan under the primary subject area focus of each lesson.
Standing Bear’s Footsteps: Meaning of Home
Standing Bear’s Footsteps tells the story of the Ponca people, who were forcibly removed from their northern Nebraska homelands and sent to Oklahoma. One of their leaders, Standing Bear, made the difficult decision to take some of his people back north and fought in the courts to have the right to do so. Today, the Oklahoma Ponca have about 3500 enrolled members while the Nebraska Ponca have about 2500. The result is a people divided by location, but not completely by culture.
World History
Australian National University – Asia and the Pacific
We are delighted to introduce you to The ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, one of the world’s leading centers for teaching, research and outreach on the region. Since the founding of The Australian National University in 1946, the College has driven Australia’s engagement and understanding of its neighborhood. The work conducted here has established the University as a global centre of excellence in research, teaching and influence on Asia and the Pacific.
Center for Global Education – Asia Society
The Center for Global Education offers a wealth of resources to educators, including those who teach in after-school or out-of-school time networks, to build capacity and transform their learning environments. Whether you’re looking for professional development opportunities, training and consulting services, or online resources, you’ve come to the right place!
The Meso-American Research Center seeks to develop a broad understanding of the people, cultures, and environment of the greater Meso-american region of Mexico and Central America. Research of the center has emerged in the context of Anthropology and Archaeology, yet is wholly interdisciplinary in focus. The Meso-American Research Center continues to maintain its focus on the Maya forest and the broad fields of study in the region.
We are a community of educators, scholars, and historians that works together in pursuit of the best possible outcomes in teaching and learning. We are passionate about supporting teachers. And like everything we do, there is no cost—ever. Our curricula are created by teachers and scholars. We offer complete social studies courses aligned to state standards, all totally free. Come explore our teaching materials, planning resources, professional-development offerings, and helpful online teacher community. Adaptable and skills-focused, all OER Project courses include built-in scaffolding to meet the needs of a range of learners. Students are grounded in historical thinking as they engage with content that interests them and improve reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. OER Project materials provide a view of the larger world to your students, preparing them for college, career and beyond.
Society for American Archaeology
As a science, archaeology focuses on understanding the many ways people of the past lived. This requires archaeologists to not only be trained in social science, but also use techniques from other fields like the life and physical sciences, earth and environmental sciences, mathematics, and the humanities. Archaeologists use these techniques from other fields, as well as those developed within the field, to more thoroughly interpret and understand the information we record when conducting archaeological investigations. The activities below are designed to help students connect with how people in the past lived and understand how scientists study people who lived hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
What is myth? What is fact? Did the Vikings have horns on their helmets? Why not? What do we know about? What have they left behind? The Viking Network Web tries to answer these and other questions. This is a great place to start exploring the Vikings!
High-quality, standards-aligned classroom resources, lesson plans, teaching inspiration, and professional development opportunities—all inspired by our mission that Global Civics is essential for twenty-first century citizenship. World101 is a growing library of free multimedia resources that provide an immersive learning experience in a variety of settings: in classrooms, in corporate training rooms, and at home. Through its entertaining, interactive story-telling, World101 makes complex international relations and foreign policy issues accessible to learners both inside and outside formal academic settings. World101 will help the American public build an understanding of today’s most pressing issues and how those issues are relevant to them, thus preparing them to make informed choices of public officials (and hold them accountable), compete on a global stage, invest in their futures, and make a difference.
Worldmapper is a collection of world maps called cartograms, where territories are resized on each map according to the subject of interest. Our range of maps is continuously extended and updated. Explore the world as you’ve never seen it before!