Community reviews for National Archives

Big oof

I really like all of the resources the National Archives provides, especially the high quality primary source documents. The lesson plans are organized in a way to engage students and to help them learn. The search tool can take some time to get comfortable with, but it gives you access to a lot of great and unexpected resources.

I liked the sheer volume of information about a single topic. It is comparable to the Internet Public Library, except that the information is not as easy to locate if the researcher has not narrowed the topic. I suspect this is because this national site has far more sources. Students will need to access this site with a specific knowledge of what they're looking for; they'll have to narrow their topic first; otherwise, they might be overwhelmed by the volume of information. This is not a site to search for a general topic. It is a great place to access additional information on an already narrowed topic.

One of the best sites for primary resources for any social studies teacher. Can serve as a guide to teacher or student led exploration of historical periods. Great resource to use when trying to teach students how to differentiate between different types of historical resources.

In general, this is a very useful website for a variety of subjects. It enables students to view primary sources such as historical maps, original documents, and artifacts. It has a cool Docs Teach feature that allows you to use their resources to create your own lesson plans or use activities and lessons already developed. On the surface it appears that it would be functional for primarily social studies teachers, but it contains such a wealth of information and links, I have found it useful as a language arts teacher and can see it being implemented in a variety of subjects.

This is great resource for finding primary source historical documents. The language of old documents can be difficult for many students, but with teacher support and scaffolding the text can provide a greater amount of depth and perspective to historical events. There are a variety of other kinds of resources beyond the traditional government documents, including personal journals, photographs, etc.

The best portions of the website are found in the DOCSTEACH portion where the National Archives houses their educational resources and lesson plans by subject for teachers. The lesson plans are high quality and easy-to-use. The other portion that is highly engaging is the highly acclaimed Digital Vault aspect of the website that enables teachers and students to select primary sources by topic of study in an interactive manner.

The National Archives is a resource for teachers and students to engage with important historical documents* (meaning WAY more than written documents) that are AUTHENTIC and directly related to U.S History. These REAL artifacts are indisputable in their connections to our past and help students to see how their county was shaped over the centuries.

As one of our governmental resources, the National Archives website is a wealth of information for student research, projects, and activities. Once difficult to manage and search, the user interface has gotten much easier over time and the teacher resources are amazing. Few people, students included, realize that the National Archives houses much more than just the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The archives can support literacy and the use of fiction and non-fiction in the classroom (Through the use of authentic text) and the use of images. Although sometimes it takes some effort to dig into the collections as the databases are quite deep, the url's are permanent and it is easy to find and bookmark the resources needed for classroom instruction. The Youtube training for educators, as well as the docsteach section are great for professional development whether it is for a teacher individually or as a group.