When I taught U.S. History one of my go-to methods for starting classroom conversations about a new topic or unit was to give my students an interesting image or a short primary source document to review and ask questions about. A great place to find those conversation starters is the National Archive’s Today’s Document website. 

Every day Today’s Document features a new image or document from the archives. The documents and images are from that day in history. Each one is accompanied by some additional research links and lesson plan resources.

In this short video I provide an overview of Today’s Document and the related resources that it provides for U.S. History teachers.