DocsTeach goes beyond teaching history and helps students to learn how to become discerning scholars with genuinely useful analytical skills.
The idea here is to offer a host of primary sources so that students can learn how to search and analyze that material in real-time. In that process students get to become historians, carrying out research to feel immersed in the excitement of uncovering the past.
This online platform is hosted by the National Archives Foundation to give educators these original materials. It is backed by tools to help get the most out of that, including a slew of learning activities.
This guides aims to lay out all you need to know about how DocsTeach could work for your class.
What is DocsTeach?
DocsTeach is an online primary sources teaching platform developed by the U.S. National Archives to bring archival documents into classrooms in interactive ways.
The original materials consist of letters, speeches, photographs, maps, posters, and videos. A suite of tools and activities are also available, designed to help teachers guide students to get the most out of all those sources.
The platform offers more than 13,000 primary source documents and hundreds of activities ready to use, plus a host of customizable teaching tools. From George Washington’s draft of the Constitution to Richard Nixon’s resignation letter, this is crammed full of excitingly powerful documents.
Everything is freely and globally accessible to help teachers explore as well as create and customize document-based activities for student needs.
How does DocsTeach work?
DocsTeach is both a resource library with original documents as well as a teaching creation suite with pre-made and customizable tools.
Teachers can create a free account to log in so that it’s possible to explore, save, and organize documents and activities.
Start out by browsing the archives to find primary sources that are relevant to what’s being taught. Helpfully, search is filtered by era, skill, or topic, as needed.
Then you can use the interactive tools to create personalized lessons comprising selected documents, activities, and instructions.
Finally, teachers can assign or share these activities with students using common tools such as Google Classroom or dedicated LMS systems.
Students can access everything directly using the website so it can be worked on using a mobile device, tablet, or laptop, as is available.
What are the best DocsTeach features?
DocsTeach has some great pre-made activities that can make turning a primary source into a lesson a simple process. These include Compare & Contrast, Mapping History, Weighing the Evidence, and Interpreting Data, to name a few.
Crucially, teachers can customize these to suit their specific needs for a lesson. Or start an entirely new one from scratch and save it for later — editable if that is needed for another type of subject, for example.
The documents themselves are something to get excited about as there are not only thousands available but some rarely seen originals.
Since everything is free and openly accessible, it all can be easily accessed, reused, modified, and shared without copyright limitations.
The fact everything can be distributed using classroom codes or URLs makes it very easy for teachers to share and for students to complete and submit responses.
How much does DocsTeach cost?
DocsTeach is totally free. It has no ads or tracking. While you can use it without giving any details, by signing up for an account you can access more features.
A login allows teachers to save custom activities, organize primary sources for reuse, and share assignments with students.
DocsTeach best tips and tricks
Start with ready-made activities
Explore the existing library in which hundreds of activities are already aligned with historical thinking skills and curriculum topics.
Customize for context
Take advantage of the creative tools to tailor instructions or groupings to your students’ reading levels and interests.
Sequence activities
Use Finding a Sequence or Making Connections tools to build multi-lesson units that scaffold understanding and deepen inquiry skills.