National Standards
One of the ten themes of the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies incldues an emphasis on GLOBAL CONNECTIONS:
"The realities of global interdependence require an understanding of the increasingly important and diverse global connections among world societies. This theme prepares students to study issues arising from globalization. It typically appears in units or courses dealing with geography, culture, economics, history, political science, government, and technology."
Recommended Websites and Resources
The following websites provide excellent resources on new pedagogies for teaching history, as well as providing extensive collections of primary sources on the history of American Foreign Relations.
HTM has an excellent short video on what historical thinking is and why it is important. It is a handy reference for teachers and can be shown to students as well. The site also has lesson plans and teaching materials designed to foster students’ historical thinking skills.
Stanford History Education Group
Some of the best new work on effective and innovative ways to teach history is coming out of the Stanford History Education Group. Their goal is to provide teachers with “high-quality resources to enrich students’ intellectual experience in the history classroom.”
The Stanford History Education Group’s thought-provoking site on history assessments. The site has a series of “History Assessments of Thinking” that “gauge historical thinking in easy-to-use, classroom-friendly ways.” It is an excellent site.
“Teachinghistory.org is designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) has created Teachinghistory.org with the goal of making history content, teaching strategies, resources, and research accessible.”
Teaching History with Technology
"A resource created to help K-12 history and social studies teachers incorporate technology effectively into their courses."
Center for History and New Media
Teacher.org Social Studies Lesson Plans
Document Collections
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. This digital version is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.
SHAFR Classroom Document Collection
Digital Public Library of America