How and Where to Find Quality Texts

All Disciplines
• Teachers College Text Sets for Popular Culture, Science, and Social Studies
• High interest nonfiction text sets
• Nonfiction middle-school text sets to support argumentative writing
• Fifth-grade text sets to support argumentative writing
• Nonfiction news and current events articles available at different lexile levels
• The Learning Network—New York Times articles organized by disciplines, often with lesson plans
• The Library of Congress—resources include primary documents, videos, data sets, classroom materials, and more
• Primary source sets offer photographs, videos, speeches, letters, maps, sound files, newspapers, songs,
drawings, interviews
• Primary sources by state
• Themed resources
• Films and videos
• Internet dictionary, almanacs, atlases, and encyclopedia in one kid-friendly place
• ReadWorks paired text sets—materials organized by grade level (K-8)
• Seminal texts with Paideia Socratic Seminar lesson plans
• USA Today
• ArticlesBase
• Google Scholar
• Terra Foundation for American Art: paintings, posters, photographs, documents, and other visual art artifacts.
Collections include: Picturing America, Art and Exploration in the American West and Mexico, Home Front: The
Visual Culture of the Civil War North, The Civil War in Art: Teaching and Learning Through Chicago Collections
• Classic Reader
• Open E-Books
• Docs Teach at the National Archives
• OER Commons
• ProCon.org

Social Studies
• The National Archives Top 100 Documents 1776-1975—milestone documents with images, transcripts, and hi-
resolution PDFs
• Stanford History Education Group, Reading like a Historian—primary source documents and lesson plans
• All About Explorers
• Primary Source World online curriculum
• The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History—letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, photos, and ephemera from
American history; free for K-12 teachers
• Fordham University History Sourcebooks—classroom-ready copy-permitted materials
• Ancient History Sourcebook
• Medieval History Sourcebook
• Modern History Sourcebook
• African History Sourcebook
• East Asian History Sourcebook
• Global History Sourcebook
• Indian History Sourcebook
• Jewish History Sourcebook
• History of Science Sourcebook
• Women’s History Sourcebook
• People with a History: An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, and Trans History
• Kid Info
• Mr. Nussbaum!
• Social Studies for Kids
• Oracle ThinkQuest
• National Geographic—maps, videos, data sets, articles
• National Geographic for Kids
Science
• American Museum of Natural History—interactive exhibition content, curriculum collections with data sets, videos,
and more
• Teachers College science text sets and bibliographies
• National Geographic—maps, videos, data sets, articles
• National Geographic for Kids
• Ranger Rick Educator Guide

K-12 Reading Passages with Text-Dependent Questions (from ReadWorks.org)

Kindergarten 5th Grade
Harry Hits a Homer It’s Opening Day
Sea Turtles Build Nests Emilio
Traffic Lights Honey to the Bee
1st Grade 6th Grade
A Day at the Pumpkin Farm Blue Lightning
How Do Apples Get to You? How Plates Affect Our Planet: Hot Spots
Squirrels Build Nests How Do Airplanes Fly?
2nd Grade 7th Grade
What Lives in the Desert? The Unknown Hall of Famer
Farmers Grow Corn Nighttime in Texas
What Lives in a Rain Forest? A Crooked Election
3rd Grade 8th Grade
History of Halloween “Paul Revere’s Ride”
The Old Stone House ‘Seven Minutes of Terror,’ Eight Years of Ingenuity
The Stonecutter Who Was Never Satisfied The American Chestnut
4th Grade 9th Grade–12th Grade
A Funny Old Ballpark Cultivating Turkey
“Casey at the Bat” “Eleanor Roosevelt as First Lady”
Cats in the Catacombs “New Orleans and the History of Jazz [Abridged]”
“Eleanor Roosevelt’s Four Basic Rights” (Primary Source)