Discover resources and activities for all ages or browse lesson plans and other materials for classroom use.
Educational Resources
Current Opportunities
Online resources
We have a number of online materials for teachers, parents, and students.
- Electing Our Presidents Teacher Workshop
- Truman Library Summer Teachers Conference 2022
- Three branches of government interactive teaching unit
- Lesson plans for teachers and parents to use at home
- Inquiry lessons created by teachers
- Truman videos from our YouTube channel
- Education programs and presentations on our YouTube channel
- Resources for student projects and research
- Digital document sets (thousands of primary sources)
- Truman photo database (more than 50,000 photos online)
- Truman Trivia (includes Truman biographical sketch)
Online resource from the National Archives
Activities & Lessons
Spy's Dilemma
Step into the shoes of a Soviet spy sent to retrieve top secret documents from Truman's White House. The Spy's Dilemma
Truman Presidential Inquiries
Take a look at ten document-based classroom units created as a collaboration between the Truman Library and Independence School District. Truman Presidential Inquiries
Lesson Plan Database
More than 390 lesson plans created by teachers are now available on the Truman Library Website. Lesson Plan Database
Truman Digital Archives
The Student Research File is currently divided into 55 topics, listed here. Each topic is focused on an event of issue from Truman's life and presidency and contains between 500 and 1500 pages of documents selected from the Truman Library's collections by its archives staff.
Popular Activities
Civics for All of US
Civics for All of US is a new national civic education initiative from the Truman Library and the National Archives that promotes civic literacy and engagement. As part of this initiative the education team at the Truman Library and educators across the National Archives will be providing teachers with programming, curricula, and exceptional field trip experiences both online and in-person.
Truman Library Teachers Conference, 2023
The Truman Library is excited to be back in person for our annual teacher conference. See this page for details.
3 Branches of Government
This series of activities allows students to gain basic information about the three branches of government by completing a series of tasks that relate to each branch.
Presidential Primary Sources Project
With the Presidential Primary Sources Project (PPSP), your class can engage in live, interactive discussions and use primary source documents to understand our nation’s presidents. Transport your students to places that helped shape past presidents’ lives. (January 19 - March 25, 2021)
Truman Places
Truman Places contains maps of the Greater Kansas City area listing many of the places Harry S. Truman lived, went to school, worked, met with people, ate, had fun, and invested his money.
Advise the President Booklets
The Advise the President Series provides teachers an opportunity to bring the deliberation process surrounding these historic decisions to the classroom. Each booklet focuses on a significant topic during the administration of a specific president.
World War I and Wheat Farmers
In this featured lesson plan, students will study the impact of World War I on wheat farmers, learning how a dramatic world event can impact a small sub-set of people. View Lesson Plan.
Document Analysis Worksheets
Teach your students the process of document analysis with this Analyzing Documents tool.
Lee's Summit student art work
For Teachers
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