The Citizen U TPS Civics Resource Center was established by the Barat Education Foundation (Barat) with the support of a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Program. It is now operated independently in collaboration with and support of the Library’s TPS Program.
The Citizen U Civics Resource Center was originally created to house inquiry-based multidisciplinary civics lessons and other TPS resources developed by Barat and its partners since 2004. The Citizen U Lesson Library contains lessons from the Library, TPS Consortium partners, and TPS educator experts. We welcome new lessons that meet the inclusion criteria.
Multidisciplinary Civics Lesson Library
Barat started with 31 lessons targeted to grades 3-12 that integrate civics with social studies, science, math, or English language arts. These lessons were developed with our partners and revised after pilot testing with teachers from across the country. Next came the expansion of this unique civics lesson database.
The Multidisciplinary Civics Lesson Library now includes early elementary (K-2) lessons and arts-integrated lessons that were developed by the Library of Congress, TPS Consortium Partners, and master teachers in the field.
Library lessons range from a single class period to multi-week units. If you have a lesson that you believe meets the lesson library criteria below and would like to submit it for consideration, please contact us. Lessons can be uploaded to our database or we can provide a link to the lesson on your organization's website.
Lesson Library Inclusion Criteria
- Has a multidisciplinary subject focus: civics + (social studies, ELA, science, math, art, music, etc.)
- Is targeted towards early elementary (K-2), elementary (3-5), middle (6-8), and/or high school (9-12); some lessons might work for more than one grade band
- Includes an activity using 1 or more primary sources from the Library of Congress
- Begins with a task that sparks inquiry, often primary source analysis
- Follows up with one or more activities to deepen inquiry through further student investigations
- Concludes with an activity in which students apply their learning by taking action and making contemporary/personal connections
National Standards
All lessons in the Citizen U Lesson Library have been vetted to ensure that they develop critical thinking skills, are student centered, and correlate to national education standards in their subject areas.
21st-Century Skills
Beyond this, these lessons are designed to inculcate a wide variety of skills necessary for success in the 21st century, including collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, information literacy, communication, leadership, social responsibility and, of course, civic literacy itself.
TPS Civics Interactives
Primary sources have tremendous educational power and can be used effectively in many different ways with students at all grade levels. The TPS Civics interactive projects were developed by a number of organizations through grants from the Library of Congress TPS Program. Each interactive provides students with engaging and meaningful opportunities to learn about Congress and civic participation using primary sources from the Library’s online collections.
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