Classroom Activities
These short classroom activities will take one or two class periods to complete. They feature Ohio’s newspaper content and align with Ohio’s state learning standards, and were developed in collaboration with creative teams at Ohio History Connection: Visitor Experience, Ohio History Day, and Ohio as America. Coming soon: third activity!
Title | Grade | Duration | Activity Sheet |
---|---|---|---|
To Strike or Not to Strike: A Worker's Choice During World War II | 9-12 | 45 minutes | View Activity |
And Now, the News! Exhibiting Inclusion at the 1939 World's Fair | 9-12 | 60 minutes | View Activity |
Atomic Age: Support and Opposition to Atomic Weapons and Energy | 8-12 | 45-180 minutes | View Activity |
Online Activities
The activities featured here will teach you how to explore Chronicling America. Test your searching and browsing skills as you look for the answers to these Crossword Puzzles, Scavenger Hunts, and Word Searches. The blank activity sheets and their answers are provided as separate downloadable PDFs. If you want to learn more about search strategies that can help you during these activities, you can take a look at our Presentation Slides, Video Tutorials, and Webinars located further down on this page.
Crossword Puzzles
Find the answers to the clues by using Ohio newspapers on Chronicling America.
Title | Activity Sheet | Answers | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Animals | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Gemstones | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Instruments | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Natural Disasters & Phenomena | View Activity | View Answers | Hard |
Ohio Governors | View Activity | View Answers | Easy |
State Symbols | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Scavenger Hunts
Find the answers to the clues by using Ohio newspapers on Chronicling America. Once you’ve found the answers, unscramble the first letters of each answer to spell the final answer.
Title | Activity Sheet | Answers | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Ohio's First Capital | View Activity | View Answers | Easy |
Ohio's First City | View Activity | View Answers | Easy |
Ohio's First President | View Activity | View Answers | Easy |
Ohio's Oldest Settlement | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Word Searches
Find the answers to the clues by using Ohio newspapers on Chronicling America. Answers can be forwards, backwards, vertical and diagonal.
Title | Activity Sheet | Answers | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Ohio Newspaper Titles | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Ohio Topic Guides | View Activity | View Answers | Medium |
Lesson Plans
The 1920s Ku Klux Klan from an Immigrant Perspective
- Objective: The following education materials have been created to engage students with digitized foreign language newspapers. Students will learn how to search the Chronicling America website to find evidence of the past, detect bias in newspaper articles, and analyze the activities of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in a historical context and from an immigrant perspective.
- Audience: Grades 9-12
- Standards Alignment: High School American History 2, 3, 16
- Contents: Each lesson contains educator outline, student worksheets and answer key, if applicable. Click the links below to download the PDFs.
- Credit: These resources were created by the Ohio History Connection for the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress. They are provided for free and are available for non-commercial use and reuse with attribution to the Ohio History Connection.
External and Internal Perceptions of United States Immigrants
- Objective: The following education materials have been created to engage students with digitized Polish-American newspapers. Students will learn how to search the Chronicling America website to find evidence of the past, detect bias in newspaper articles, and place current immigration issues in a historical context.
- Audience: Grades 9-12
- Standards Alignment: High School American History 2, 3, 16
- Contents: Each lesson contains educator outline, student worksheets and answer key, if applicable. Click the links below to download the PDFs.
- Credit: These resources were created by the Ohio History Connection for the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress. They are provided for free and are available for non-commercial use and reuse with attribution to the Ohio History Connection.
The German-American Experience During World War I
- Objective: The following education materials have been created to engage students with digitized German-American newspapers. Students will learn how to research using Chronicling America, how to translate and analyze foreign-language texts, and gain a deeper understanding of the German-American experience in Ohio during World War I (WWI).
- Audience: Grades 9-12
- Standards Alignment: High School American History 2, 3, 16
- Contents: Each lesson contains educator outline, student worksheets and answer key, if applicable. Click the links below to download the PDFs.
- Credit: These resources were created by the Ohio History Connection for the National Digital Newspaper Program, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress. They are provided for free and are available for non-commercial use and reuse with attribution to the Ohio History Connection.
Research Skills: Finding and Evaluating Civil War Era Newspaper Articles
- Objective: Students will learn how to search the Chronicling America website to find evidence of the past. The lesson introduces students to databases and search strategies used in historic research. Students will use the evidence they discover to create a poster that compares and contrasts newspapers articles from the Union and the Confederacy.
- Audience: Grade 8 (can be adapted for other grades)
- Standards Alignment: Grade 8 History 1, 11, 19
- Contents: Click to download PDF containing lesson plan, student activity sheet and search tips handout
- Credit: This lesson plan was developed in conjunction with the Ohio History Connection Educational Partnerships and Outreach Department staff for the eighth-grade supplement of the Ohio as America online textbook developed and maintained by the Ohio History Connection. For more information about Ohio as America, click here.
Presentation Slides
NDNP-OH staff have provided presentations on Chronicling America and newspaper digitization for various audiences, including genealogists, public and academic librarians, educators and journalists. Slides from select presentations are provided below.
- All About Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (2018)
- All About Chronicling America’s Polish Language Newspapers (2018)
- All About Chronicling America’s Foreign Language Newspapers (2018)
- All About Chronicling America’s German Language Newspapers (2017)
- Unearthing Your Roots with Ohio’s Newspapers on Chronicling America (2015)
- Why, Who, What, When, Where & How: Digitizing Your Local Newspaper (2015)
- Extra! Extra! Read All About It Online! (2015)
- From Deutschland to Ohio: German Language Newspapers at the Ohio History Connection (2015)
- Finding the Past: Chronicling America in the Classroom (2015)
- From Microfilm to Digital Images: The National Digital Newspaper Program (2014)
- Out of the Book and Onto the Web: The Ohio State Journal Project (2014)
- The Good, The Bad and the Weird: Stories from Ohio’s Historical Newspapers (2014)
Topic Guides
Interested in finding out more about a range of topics in Ohio’s past? Ohio’s collection of Chronicling America topic guides provides introductory information about a person, group, place, event, concept, or other phenomena in Ohio’s history. These guides also give you important dates, helpful search terms and strategies and links to sample newspaper articles on topics that were widely reported on by the Ohio press of the time. For even more topic guides, see Chronicling America’s Recommended Topics, created and maintained by the Library of Congress.
Video Tutorials
Using Chronicling America Podcasts
Chronicling America Search Strategy Videos
Searching Chronicling America’s Foreign Language Newspapers
Title | Description | Transcript |
---|---|---|
Researching with Foreign Language Newspapers | Watch this video to learn some tips for working with foreign language newspapers on Chronicling America. Topics covered include the importance of immigrant newspapers; titles and mottos; bias; appearance; and contents. You may also find this video helpful if you’re working with other historic newspapers. | View Transcript |
Using Online Translation Tools | Watch this video to learn some tips for working with online translation tools in order to access the information contained in foreign-language newspapers on Chronicling America. You may also find this video helpful if you’re working with other foreign-language printed materials. | View Transcript |
Working with German Fraktur | Watch this video to learn some tips for working with Fraktur font in order to access the information contained in German-language newspapers on Chronicling America. You may also find this video helpful if you’re working with other German-language printed materials that use a Fraktur font. | View Transcript |
Webinars
Name | PowerPoint | Transcript |
---|---|---|
Chronicling America and History Day Research (September 13, 2011, Duration: 1 hour) [recording no longer available] | View Slides | View Transcript |
Chronicling America for Genealogists (January 9, 2014, Duration: 1.5 hours) [recording no longer available] | View Slides |