Curated OER
Jamestown Changes
Students examine how the Jamestown settlement changed the first few years after it was founded. They take a virtual field trip of Jamestown, read primary source documents, discuss census information, and write a summary of changes in...
Curated OER
New England Colonies
Students study the New England colonies. For this colonies lesson, students use a directed reading-thinking method to learn about the New England colonies. Students follow the method to make predictions, read the text, and analyze the...
Curated OER
American History Overview: February
Third graders examine and discuss the first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia. They write responses to an excerpt from George Percy's journal, and trace the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean for slave...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Becoming American: The British American Colonies, 1690 1763
Explore these primary source documents detailing the growth, peoples, economies, and ideas relating to the British American Colonies in the 18th century. Features notes and discussion questions.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690 1763
Primary source documents on how the political relationship between the colonies and Great Britain changed from 1690 to 1763 and how the colonists responded.
PBS
Africans in America: Venture Smith's Narrative on Buying His Freedom
Here is the original text from Venture Smith's narrative on how he purchased his own freedom and his families, and his life afterwards.
Yale University
Avalon Project: A Grant of the Province of Maine
The text of the legal document granting the province of Maine to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason in 1622.
Other
New Bedford Whaling Museum: Online Exhibitions
The New Bedford Whaling Museum provides a well-done, comprehensive site that includes all aspects of American whaling. This site is a pleasure to amble through if you love the lore and legend of late eighteenth-century sailing ships,...
OpenStax
Open Stax: English Settlements in America
Read about the first English settlements in America, the differences between the Chesapeake Bay colonies and the New England colonies, the wars between native inhabitants and English colonists, and the role of Bacon's Rebellion in the...
Other
Plimoth Plantation: What to Wear?: Wampanoag and Pilgrim Clothing
Compare the clothing of the Wampanoag people with the English clothing of the Pilgrims in the 1600s. Photographs provide clear images of how they would have dressed.
Other
San Francisco Unified School District: Colonial Faire Project
A large collection of high-quality resources for learning and teaching about the Thirteen English Colonies. The main page outlines examples of student project possibilities. There are individual pages for primary resources, people from...
Stanford University
Sheg: Document Based History: Reading Like a Historian:examining Passenger Lists
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students use primary source documents to investigate central historical questions. In this investigation, students critically examine the passenger lists of ships headed to New England and Virginia to...
PBS
Wnet: Thirteen: Colonial House: For Teachers: 'Tis a Very Dirty Manner of Life
Interactive adjunct to the popular PBS series Colonial House, which follows the efforts of modern-day families attempting to live as early colonists in seventeenth-century Maine, focuses on the language and expressions common to that...
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: Settlement of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies
In this lesson, 5th graders learn about the people who founded the New England colonies and the role that religion played in shaping them. Includes background information for the teacher. Students explore primary resource readings on the...
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: American Indians and English Settlers in Colonial America
In this instructional activity, 5th graders examine the relations between Indians and the settlers in the 1600s and 1700s. Background information for teachers is included. Students will work in groups to look at three different colonies...
National Women’s History Museum
National Women's History Museum: Anne Hutchinson
Considered one of the earliest American feminists, Anne Hutchinson was a spiritual leader in colonial Massachusetts who challenged male authority.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English I, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Portraits of early New Englanders as well as four buildings from seventeenth-century New England that accompany accounts in those British colonies of struggles, Indian hostilities, and economic success.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: The Colonial Period of American History
Comprehensive information about the colonial period of American History. Includes information about New England, colonies, government, people, The French and Indian War, and the Salem Witch Trials.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: The Colonial Period
The early settlers to the New World began to map strategy for their own system of government. This site details that strategy and what kinds of events spawned the idea of representative government.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Divining America: Puritanism and Predestination
The Puritans came to the New World in search of religious freedom. This National Humanities Center article tells what they did with that freedom. Site also offers topics for discussion with students.
Library of Congress
Loc: Teachers: Geography and Its Impact on Colonial Life
Beginning with a discussion on how people adapt to or relocate to environments, this lesson encourages students to explore why the Colonists settled in specific regions. In groups, students examine primary documents, analyzing Colonists'...
Digital History
Digital History: British Mercantilism and the Cost of Empire [Pdf]
Learn about the theory of mercantilism and how it affected the economies of the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. Practice making a bar graph showing the value of exports to and imports from England between 1700 and 1774 with...
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Fordham University: Modern History Sourcebook: Colonial North America
Scroll through this site from the Modern History Sourcebook of Fordham University to New England and click on the primary source documents concerning Edmund Andros. This site contains dozens of links related to colonial America. Sections...
Digital History
Digital History: Regional Contrasts
Read about the populations of the New England colonies as compared to the Southern colonies in the 1600s. See how the numbers of Native Americans decreased dramatically particularly in Massachusetts Bay Colony.