This document from the Virginia Department of Education reports on a project to enable public schools to meet requirements of two laws. The first law required public schools to emphasize instruction on the documents of Virginia and United States history and government. The second requested that all public schools be urged to display copies of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States in commemoration of the bicentennial anniversary of its ratification. The Board of Education was directed to ensure that students be thoroughly knowledgeable about the significance of documents of history, with an emphasis on instructing students on the inherent rights included in these documents; the most significant of The Federalist Papers; the historical, political and cultural shaping of such documents, and their application to daily living. Virginia Standards of Learning objectives for social studies provide a focus on instruction of historical documents at grades five, seven, and eleven. This report discusses two documents developed to further assist school divisions in implementing these objectives. The first, "Documents and Symbols of Democracy" is an instructional book for Virginia students on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, the Declaration of American Independence, the Constitutions of the United States and Virginia, and national and state symbols. The second publication was written to assist teachers as they prepared instructional and assessment activities to help students understand the documents of Virginia and U.S. history. Appendices which comprise about three quarters of the document include: (1) a copy of Senate Joint Resolution No. 187; (2) a copy of House Joint Resolution 288; (3) a copy of Superintendent's Memorandum No. 168; (4) "Documents and Symbols of Democracy" (because of length not physically included); (5) "Lessons on Documents and Symbols of Democracy" (because of length not physically included; and (6) a 23-item ERIC bibliography on the use of historic documents in classroom instruction. (DK)