James Madison Center
http://www.jmu.edu/madison/center/index.htm
“The James Madison Center was founded in 1999 to honor the legacy of the nation's fourth President and Father of the United States Constitution. Located on the campus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the Center serves as a repository for information on Madison's life and times (1751-1836) as well as that of the Federalist Era.”
The James Madison Center webpage contains an abundance of material about James Madison’s life and times. While they place special emphasis on Madison’s role in the Constitutional Convention and his presidency, they also include plenty of material about his boyhood, personal life, friends, and family. Moreover, they include excerpts from Madison, Jefferson, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, as well as other primary sources. Teachers can access lesson plans from this website, too. Finally, this site provides links to other sites on Colonial History and the Early Republic.

Jamestown Virtual Colony
http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/socialstudies/projects/jvc/home.html
“The Jamestown Virtual Colony was developed by the Program in Social Studies Education of the Curry School of Education, with the assistance of a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy.”
This website’s main purpose, provided by the University of Virginia, is to help teachers plan lessons and activities about America’s first colony, Jamestown. They provide enough material for an entire course (5 full units), but recognize that many teachers won’t be able to devote that many classes to the subject. They offer a series of well developed and researched lesson plans that can be adapted to the individual teacher’s needs. The lesson plans include activities and bibliographies, but still leave some work for the teacher in fitting the lesson to their students’ needs. With these lesson plans, the teacher has an excellent framework of ideas and approaches to build upon. This site also includes a few interesting webquest activities for students that could be productive if there is access to a computer lab. The historical overview should help give background information for teachers and students, and the additional links provide a portal to some primary documents and other useful sites. This site is an excellent starting point for information on the Jamestown Colony (through its links) and a great resource for lesson plans and other classroom ideas. BR

The Plymouth Colony Project
http://etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/
“This Plymouth Colony Archive presents a collection of fully searchable texts, including: court records, colony laws, seventeenth century journals and memoirs, probate inventories, wills, town plans, maps, and fort plans; research and seminar analyses of numerous topics; biographical profiles of selected colonists; and architectural, archaeological and material culture studies.”
As suggested by the website’s introduction, it promises an extensive selection of primary source material and data. Boasting awards, accolades and widespread academic and public recognition, this University of Virginia website lives up to its self praise. The best primary documents are the selection of wills and court records. Throughout the rest of the site are numerous other primary documents, biographies and texts which all prove insightful. There are numerous images of historic paintings, sites, maps, and artifacts excavated in Plymouth. Mixed in with these images and documents are essays and articles that help contextualize the material culture and artifacts being displayed. The site also contains an internal search engine to speed up the process of finding information relevant to the browse’s interests. One last valuable feature of this site is the numerous links that it provides. If something of interest is not found on this site, there are many links to other sites that will hopefully prove more fruitful. For someone interested in Plymouth, this website definitely warrants consideration and attention. BR

Spy Letters of the American Revolution
http://www.si.umich.edu/spies
“The Revolutionary War was not fought by proclamations and battles alone. A major component of the war was the challenge of organizing military strategies over thousands of miles of battlefield. From the very beginning of the war, a complex network of spies, double agents, and traitors began to emerge in an effort to learn the plans of the enemy before they were enacted.”
Created by four students at the University of Michigan School of Information—Kate Foster, Cynthia Ghering, Michelle Light, and Melissa McCollum—this site is a great resource for students and teachers desiring to learn more about covert operations during the American Revolution. Utilizing primary documents as examples, the authors explain the methods employed by spies to slip their communiqués past enemy lines. Also, the site offers browsers stories about famous royal and colonial spies, as well as an overview of the war. Finally, the creators give teachers great classroom ideas in the Teachers’ Lounge. Lesson plans outline projects like making invisible ink, coded letters, and mask letters.

Teaching with Documents: Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)
http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/teaching_with_documents.html#revolution
These National Archives and Records Administration lesson plans are of excellent quality. Each uses one or more primary documents to explore a topic in American History. Along with the document, there are worksheets and teaching activities provided. (BR)
The lessons plan titles are as follows:
 · Images of the American Revolution
 · Observing Constitution Day
 · Launching the New United States Navy
 · Eli Whitney's Patent for the Cotton Gin
 · United States v. Thomas Cooper: A Violation of the Sedition Law
 · Tally of the 1824 Electoral College Vote