Common Core State Standards and Library of Congress Teacher Resources: Find Lesson Plans (and More) That Meet Your CCSS Needs

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are on many teachers’ minds this school year, and the Library of Congress is ready to help. The Library’s teacher resources are a great fit for teachers trying to meet key CCSS goals, including critical thinking, analyzing informational texts, and working with primary sources. They’re all free, and finding them is as easy as going to www.loc.gov/teachers.

The Search by Standards Tool on www.loc.gov/teachers

Hundreds of Library of Congress lesson plans, primary source sets, presentations and more—all based on authentic primary sources from the Library’s online collections—are now aligned to the CCSS, to state content standards, and to several national organizations’ standards.

The Library’s updated Search by Standards tool makes it easy to find the resources you need to meet your Common Core or state standards. Select your state, grade level, and subject for a list of Library of Congress teaching materials aligned to those standards. Or, once you’ve found a lesson plan or primary source set that you’d like to use, one click will show you which of your standards that particular item meets.

All of your search results are easy to share or print, so you can pass the word to other teachers using your favorite social media tools. And you can continue to read the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog to learn more about how Library of Congress primary sources and teaching resources can help you find success with the Common Core State Standards.

If you’ve used Library of Congress primary sources to meet Common Core State Standard standards—or can think of good strategies for doing so–please let us know in the comments.

Voting Rights for Women

The original Constitution of the United States was nearly mute on voting rights, ceding them to the states to determine. This, the second of two posts exploring the struggles of two groups to gain full voting rights, will take a look at the long road toward the full enfranchisement of women.

Path to the Presidency: Catching the Voter’s Eye

Campaign posters, buttons and other ephemera are not new. Prior to the advent of radio, television and the internet, candidates used campaign signs, buttons, ribbons, light shades and banners to reach out to voters who might not have been able to come to a speech or access a newspaper. The Library of Congress has made many of these unique artifacts available online.