Create your own interactive learning activity.

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Turn your students into historians with primary-source based activities. Provide them the unique web address for an activity, or compile a Classroom full of activities.

Each activity-creation tool helps students develop historical thinking skills. Pick documents, set up the activity, and write instructions for your students. You can include questions or an assignment in your conclusion. Students can submit and save their responses so that you can access them in My Students' Responses, or have them emailed to you if desired.

You may wish to follow our Guide to Creating Your DocsTeach Activity. Once you've registered for an account, create a new activity in My Activities.

Create a New Activity

Analyzing a Child Labor Photograph activity

Analyzing Documents

Teach students the process of document analysis, the foundation for working with primary sources.



Road to Revolution: Patriotism or Treason? activity

Focusing on Details: Discussion Topic

Showcase one document while posing a question, comment, or directions for students.


Focusing on Details: Compare and Contrast
We the People activity

Display two to four documents to prompt students to observe and point out similarities and differences.




Focusing on Details: Zoom/Crop Finding American Symbols activity

Intrigue students about a particular document and give them practice forming hypotheses.



Focusing on Details: White Out/Black Out
Analyzing a Letter About Ford Pardoning Nixon activity

Teach students to use visual cues and context to understand a document.




Focusing on Details: Spotlight Analyzing a Letter to Congress About Bloody Sunday activity

Highlight a specific part of a document.





Finding a Sequence
Nixon Visits China: The Week that Changed the World activity

Present primary sources and challenge students to sequence them based on careful document analysis.



Making Connections
The Titanic Disaster: Measuring Loss of Life, Property and Injuries activity

Present primary sources as a string of documents and help students make connections among those documents and the historical events they illustrate.



Mapping History Lewis & Clark's Expedition to the Complex West activity

Link primary sources to locations on a map to practice spatial thinking and understand the impact of geographic factors in history.




Seeing the Big Picture The Constitution at Work activity

Pair documents concerning a historical event, concept, or figure with descriptions, questions, or other documents to impress upon students that the whole is derived of smaller parts.


Weighing the Evidence How Have Americans Responded to Immigration? activity

Turn primary sources into historical evidence that students sort through and evaluate to draw historical conclusions.




Interpreting Data Analyzing Evidence of the Pearl Harbor Attack activity

Introduce students to primary source documents containing historical data and encourage them to consider the source, the presentation style, and the intended impact of the material.