Why I’m Building Free U.S. History Resources for Teachers
I’ve added quite a few new resources to the History Forge recently.
If you teach U.S. history, you can now find readings and activities covering topics such as the French and Indian War, British taxes and colonial resistance, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Intolerable Acts.
I’ve also added activities covering the causes and major events of the American Revolution, along with a Declaration of Independence grievance-ranking activity.
But I wanted to take a minute to explain why I’m building these resources in the first place.
I Know How Much Time Teachers Spend Looking for Resources
I’m a history teacher in Texas, so I know what it is like to search for something you can actually use in class.
There are plenty of history worksheets online. The problem is finding something that teaches the content accurately, makes sense for your students, and fits the way you teach.
Sometimes you find a good reading, but there are no questions. Sometimes you find an activity, but it requires another hour of work before you can use it. Other times, a resource looks good on the surface but does not really help students understand the history.
That is one of the reasons I started the History Forge.
I have a lot of U.S. history materials, ideas, and classroom experience. I want to turn those into free history resources that other teachers can use without having to rebuild everything themselves.
I Think About My Classroom First
When I create a History Forge resource, I think about how I would use it in my own classroom.
Would my students understand the reading?
Does it explain enough of the history without overwhelming them?
Do the questions make students think, or do they just ask them to copy a sentence?
Can I use the resource during a regular class period?
Would it help me see whether students actually understand the topic?
Those are the questions I ask before I worry about how the resource looks on a product page.
The materials are built around the kinds of readings, questions, discussions, and activities I use, or would genuinely use, with my own students.
That doesn't mean every resource will work exactly the same way in every classroom. Teachers know their students and will always make adjustments. But I want teachers to feel confident that these materials were created with a real classroom in mind.
I Want Students to Think About the History
I do not want to create a standard assignment where students read a passage and answer five predictable multiple-choice questions.
Students can complete that kind of activity without always understanding what they read. They may find the right sentence or recognize a familiar word, but that does not necessarily mean they understand the causes, decisions, perspectives, and consequences behind the history.
When I create a Reading and Analysis resource, I try to build historical thinking into the entire lesson.
That is why the readings include a Marking the Text activity. Students are not simply told to underline important information. The marks are designed around the thinking that matters for that particular topic.
Students might identify a British action and connect it to a colonial reaction. They might distinguish between a cause and a consequence, track how a conflict escalated, compare perspectives, or mark evidence that helps explain why an event mattered.
The questions are designed with the same purpose. Some may be multiple choice, but they should require students to think about relationships, evidence, and meaning. Other questions may ask students to correct a misconception, analyze a perspective, connect different parts of the reading, or support a claim with historical evidence.
The goal is not to make every assignment unnecessarily difficult. It is to make sure the work students complete helps them understand the history instead of simply finishing a worksheet.
That is a big part of my reason for building the History Forge.
Starting With the American Revolution
Most of the resources currently available focus on the causes of the American Revolution.
The Reading and Analysis collection now includes:
There are also classroom activities covering:
The reading resources are designed to help students see how the events connect. I do not want students to memorize the Stamp Act, Boston Massacre, and Boston Tea Party as isolated events. I want them to understand the developing conflict between Britain and the colonies.
The activities give teachers additional ways to help students organize the history, examine relationships, discuss different viewpoints, and demonstrate what they understand.
Built With the Texas TEKS in Mind
Because I teach in Texas, I use the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, when planning the content.
That means I am thinking about more than whether a topic is mentioned. I am thinking about what students are expected to do with what they learn.
Do they need to identify something? Explain it? Analyze a cause-and-effect relationship? Compare different perspectives? Support an answer with evidence?
Those verbs matter because they shape the reading, the Marking the Text activity, the questions, and the final written response.
The resources may be built with the Texas U.S. history TEKS in mind, but they are not written as Texas-only materials. The history itself, and the thinking students are asked to do, can fit middle school and high school U.S. history classrooms in other states as well.
Free Resources Teachers Can Actually Use
I want the History Forge to become a place where teachers can find useful U.S. history resources without needing another subscription.
We are starting with readings and American Revolution activities, but I do not want the History Forge to be limited to one type of resource or one period of history.
Some materials may be readings. Others may be review activities, primary-source lessons, DBQs, bellringers, one-pagers, or something else that makes sense for the topic.
Whatever the format, I want the resource to have a purpose. It should help students make connections, examine evidence, organize their thinking, or explain what they understand.
I am not trying to add resources just to make the number bigger. I want to build things teachers can look at and say, “Yes, I can use this.”
That is the purpose behind the History Forge.
If these resources save another teacher some time, help a student understand a difficult topic, or make a history lesson work a little better, then they are doing what I created them to do.
Explore the History Forge
You can explore the free readings, American Revolution activities, and other available materials on the History Forge U.S. History Resources page.
I’ll continue adding resources as they are completed and ready for the classroom.
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