Classroom Materials: World History

• World History

• Linking Family History and World History

  Linda Pomerantz shares a lesson plan designed to illustrate ways that family history research using visual primary sources may be incorporated into a world history survey course. The lesson demonstrates ways to work with primary source materials and link them to large themes in world history.

• World Civilizations: The Ancient Period to 500 CE

  In David Smith's project, students use world history methods (Big Picture, Diffusion, Syncretism, Comparison, and Common Phenomena) to interpret secondary and primary materials. Primary material is handled through directed reading questions that focus on three classics: the Odyssey, the Ramayana and the Analects.

• The World History Survey: Visual Literacy and Associative Thought

  Lael Sorensen has compiled visual primary sources, arranged by civilization, for students and teachers to utilize in the medieval section of their world history survey. All of the lessons seek to teach visual literacy and to encourage associative thought.

• Imperialism: European, American, and Japanese

  A multi-part project compiled by Thomas Reins that considers the causes and consequences of modern imperialism, using China as a case study, by asking students to analyze a diverse set of primary sources.

• Through the Lens of History: Biafra, Nigeria, the West and the World

  David Trask shares a unit in which students analyze a single event in 1960s Nigerian history to learn more about colonial and post-colonial Africa, the West and the world.

• Teaching Difficult Legal or Political Concepts: Using Online Primary Sources in Writing Assignments

  Sue C. Patrick's shares syllabi from her United States History and Western Civilization courses, which include assignments and links to digital primary sources. She also reviews a number of digital primary sources for the benefit of other instructors interested in using them in the classroom.

• Images of Power: Art as an Historiographic Tool

  This guide compiled by Jeff Kinard contains images of significant artworks intended to assist students in their understanding of historical contexts from ancient civilization to early modern times.

• Social Science Laboratories via the Web: Active Learning with Data

  To encourage the use of social science data in history, Russel Van Wyk has compiled a useful guide that shows how to use quantitative analysis of texts, demographic data, an interactive historical atlas module, and Geographic Information Services (GIS) to teach undergraduate students.

• The National History Center’s New Teaching Decolonization Resource Collection

  The National History Center's new Teaching Decolonization Resource Collection provides resources for instructors at any level to teach about decolonization.