You know that excited-yet-also-frustrated feeling you get when you come across something that is awesome and can totally help you out in the classroom? You have that whole, “Why haven’t I found this sooner” moment. Well, I had that when I came across this website today. I was looking for a particular historical picture on the Library of Congress website (which has an amazing, yet overwhelming amount of stuff on it), when I came across their “Today in History” series.
When I taught full-time, I always had a “This day in history” segment in my bell ringer. I would display one significant historical event (not necessarily specifically related to US history) on the board and discuss it briefly with my students. When I did it, I had to create a PowerPoint slide with a picture and explanation for each school day of the year. It took me a while to research and create them. I did have a book called Today in History, which helped, but it was still time-consuming.
The students really enjoyed it. Guess what? You don’t have to go through all of that work to do this in your classroom. You can just go here and find the date you need. Under each link for each date, there is a page about at least one historical event which contains a picture and an explanation. It’s really easy to navigate! Also, each page (or at least all of the ones I checked out) had links at the bottom to related Library of Congress resources. Even if this doesn’t become a daily feature of your classroom, you could always keep it handy in case your lesson runs short and you need a filler for the last few minutes of class.
By the way, the History Channel also has a really good This Day in History page, which is accompanied by a video. However, the video has a commercial and sometimes the videos are slow to load. Also, the History Channel video covers 5 or 6 topics, and sometimes it’s more effective to focus on one particular event rather than mention several briefly. Either way, both of these resources can save you time!