Milestone Documents: Free Primary Sources and Teacher Resources!

Milestone Documents provides primary sources for teachers and students to use when addressing the discipline of history. The collection includes sources from American and world history in the form of government documents, laws, speeches, court cases, treaties, and manifestos along with many other documents types. The primary sources provided through this website are easy to access and are available free of charge. In addition to primary source documents, there are many scholarly and expert analyses available for a fee.

This site also has dedicated a section specifically for teachers. Milestone Documents offers not only the documents themselves, but teacher resources in the form of activity guides, study questions, lesson plans, handouts, and more. These documents have been created by historians and teachers to enrich the classroom experience. There are also guides to teaching and learning with primary source documents in case teachers need a refresher on how to instruct using these resources. The best feature of these teaching resources is that they are free to download!

I am a big proponent of document based learning and teaching, and I this is the first site I check if I am designing a social studies activity (I have even used this site for graduate papers). Aside from all the free stuff for teachers, this site is wonderful because it is constantly expanding offers a wide range of materials. Since I lasted visited Milestone Documents, the experts have added a specific section focused on ancient and modern Indian documents which chronicle their history (Not Native Americans, though they have those documents too!).

Milestone Documents provides teachers and students with access to many important primary source historical documents. If you need a primary source or reading to learn activity, this is the place to start looking!