What Teaching Materials Does MissionUS Offer for Educators?

MissionUS provides a full educator guide for every mission on the site. Each guide is built around the same six-part structure: a mission preview, classroom activities, an overview section, professional learning resources, historical background, and additional resources. The materials are designed to help teachers move a mission from "played at home" to "used in class" without building lessons from scratch.

What's inside each educator guide

The site describes the educator guides as featuring:

• Mission Preview — links to preview or play the mission before assigning it.
• Classroom Activities — document-based activities, reflection questions, and more.
• Overview Information — curriculum overviews, implementation guides, and standards alignments.
• Professional Learning Resources — webinars and other resources to support using the missions in the classroom.
• Historical Background — information on historical events, characters, myths and misconceptions, and further context.
• Additional Resources — support materials and suggestions for further reading, viewing, and research.

The practical value is in the pairing: the preview lets you check content and length before class time, the activities give you something to run during class, and the overview and standards alignment help you justify the mission against your curriculum requirements.

The missions these guides cover

Teaching materials exist for each mission, and the missions span a wide range of eras:

Because each mission has its own guide, you can pick the era that matches your unit rather than adapting one mission to every topic.

How teachers use the materials

The site's own framing is "Serious history, serious games," and the educator section is where the serious-history half lives. A workable sequence, based on what the guides contain:

1. Preview the mission using the preview link, so you know the plot, the decision points, and roughly how long it takes.
2. Read the historical background to catch the myths and misconceptions the guide flags — useful for anticipating student questions.
3. Run a classroom activity from the document-based set, or use the reflection questions after students play.
4. Check the standards alignment in the overview section if you need to document curriculum fit.
5. Use the additional resources for extension work or further reading.

The professional learning resources — webinars and similar — are aimed at teachers who want support before using the missions in class rather than figuring it out alone.

What teachers say it's good for

The site collects educator testimonials that point to the same strength. Paul Frankmann, an 8th grade social studies teacher in Aurora, OH, describes the games as helping students "connect, care, and think," and credits them with bringing social studies to life through "honesty, empathy, multiple perspectives, and challenging complexity." Elizabeth Thompson, a 7th grade language arts/history teacher, says the thing she appreciates most is that the games help students "better understand the lives of people involved in these events," because middle schoolers often struggle to connect information to real lives.

That's a consistent theme: the teaching materials aren't just comprehension checks — they're built to get students inside a historical person's decisions.

Where to start

Go to the MissionUS site and open the "Teach Mission US" section. Pick the mission that matches your unit, read its educator guide, and preview the mission before assigning it. If you want support first, look at the professional learning resources for that mission.