The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Division of Education Programs, requires the development of supplemental curriculum materials for the EDSITEment project to provide K-12 humanities teaching resources to the public.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent agency of the Federal government, provides grants to individuals and organizations for projects in the humanities, which include such disciplines as ancient and modern languages and literature, history, philosophy, and religion. Grants support conservation of and access to the nation’s cultural resources; research and educational opportunities for humanities professors, independent scholars, and elementary and secondary school teachers; the writing of scholarly texts; museum exhibitions, television and radio programs, and other public programs that examine humanities’ ideas and themes.

NEH seeks proposals to design and develop educational resources for the agency’s EDSITEment website http://edsitement.neh.gov/. EDSITEment is a website of NEH that offers an ever-expanding collection of resources for teachers, after-school providers, students, and parents in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies.

Begun in 1997 as a compendium of educational websites judged by humanities specialists to be of high intellectual quality and covering a wide range of subjects, from American history to literature, world history and culture, language, art, and archaeology, EDSITEment has grown to include an extensive collection of more than 500 lesson plans as well as links to other teaching resources.

EDSITEment commissions, creates, and publishes online lesson-planning content designed for teachers, and interactive links on historical, literary, and cultural topics. EDSITEment also publicizes humanities content, grant products, and teacher development opportunities available from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

EDSITEment’s constituents include K–12 teachers, librarians, and administrators; K–12 students; teachers and students in Advanced Placement courses; parents and after-school providers; and post-secondary academics and academic administrators.

EDSITEment’s peer organizations are: Smithsonian Learning Lab (https://learninglab.si.edu/ ); National Humanities Center (https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-programs/); The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection); and ReadWriteThink (National Council of Teachers of English and International Reading Association http://www.readwritethink.org/). 

Working in conjunction with EDSITEment staff and in alignment with EDSITEment website templates and concept models, the contractor will design, develop, revise, and deliver lesson planning and related resources to meet the following objectives:

• Provide materials that are professional, engaging, accessible, and in keeping with EDSITEment’s mission of excellence in humanities resources for K-12 education.
• Develop materials that will ensure that EDSITEment’s mission, programs, and resources are accessible and comprehensible to our constituents and compliant with Section 508 best practices.
• Address subjects and topics relevant to the teaching and learning of U.S. history, civics, and world history courses for K-12 education, including materials for Advanced Placement U.S. History, Advanced Placement U.S. Government, and Advanced Placement European History. (Please see Appendix A for the list of topics).
• Incorporate, where appropriate, perspectives and experiences of underrepresented communities with attention to questions of racial equity, gender equality, the evolution of the American landscape, and America’s place in the world.  
• Incorporate primary sources that address multiple perspectives, subject specific standards, inquiry-based learning activities, and formative and summative assessments. Incorporate, where available and appropriate, relevant digital media, including videos, podcasts, recorded audio, and digital archives.  
• Include differentiated learning activities and projects appropriate for grade bands K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and Advanced Placement such as, but not limited to, station activities, flipped classrooms, jigsaw activities, Socratic seminars, and digital learning environments.
• Provide supplementary materials that include, but are not restricted to, handouts, graphic organizers, photographs, illustrations, and maps.
• Incorporate, where appropriate, NEH-funded projects, articles, and other resources.
• Ensure that all content and content-based resources, including images, video and film, created and/or incorporated into deliverable for site are freely available for educational use. This includes, but is not restricted to, content in the public domain, open-source content, or content that can be copied, modified, and reused by the general public without cost or restriction. Video and audio media should be produced by non-profit, non-partisan organizations and institutions.
• Other requirements that may arise within the time limits of this contract.

These lesson planning materials may not incorporate:

• Advocacy of a particular program of social or political action.
• Promotion of a particular political, religious, or ideological point of view, and politically partisan rhetoric.
• Support of specific public policies or legislation.

Please see the attachment for additionald requirements and information.