2011Reference

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) website provide a unique resource page to connect art and other areas of curriculum. The resources finder allows you to search by curriculum, topic, or artist. These searches provide you with student activities, teacher lesson plans, biographies, and the artwork to accompany them. The NGA has a loan program available.

This website provides information on the climate, weather, the atmosphere, oceans and coasts, and marine life. Students can explore tornadoes, hurricanes, and other weather phenomenon. It provides text and video information along with teacher resources and classroom materials. I think this would be a great site for a middle to high school science classes.

I can really relate to this article because when I taught 5th grade, students needed to identify primary and secondary sources.  We had many discussions because this can be a confusing topic (not only for 5th graders).

Search digital collections on this website to see all sorts of print, radio, and TV ads for various companies such as Kodak, Palmolive, Pullman, and Coca Cola. I think that social studies teachers would use this site quite a bit when studying certain eras or when looking to compare the past with the present. There are also propaganda posters from different time periods that could be used when studying U.S. and world history.

Digital History has documents and photos that cover most of the topics taught in American History. Students can search by category or use the online modules that are arranged by topic. The modules include primary sources such as photos and documents. Also included in the modules are a fact sheet, website recommendations, and other books and films that have to do with the topic. An especially fun part of the site is the "You Choose the Headline" feature, which allows students to choose an event from a list and see the actual newspaper headline from that day.

This site is one of my favorites.  It is one of those sites that is packed with so much interest that you don't want to stop exploring.  The set up is very appealing and the appearance of the site is beautiful.  The images, accounts, exibitions and multimedia are so rich and authentic.  There is so much here: guides for teachers, interactive timeline, historical music and more.  This is a must see if you teach social studies.

Digital History offers many sources for teachers and high school students. A section of primary sources that include historic newspapers, documents, court cases, and other sources are available. Visual, multimedia, and interactives are available to enrich student's learning and research process.

A science topic that is bound to grab and hold onto everyone's attention is outer space. NASA offers four versions of their student site: K-4, 5-8, 9-12, and higher education. Each version offers some basic "must-haves" for primary sources such as photo libraries, videos, and a link to NASA-TV. In addition, there are games to motivate students, career profiles (to help students see what steps are necessary if they want to become an astronaut), and "Homework Topics" to help students extend their learning. There is also a great NASA Kids Club that is available!

The NMAH Collections found at this website could be used for both students and teachers of all ages. This is a great way for students to see some of the artifacts in the Smithsonian. For example,a digital photo of cast iron shoes worn by a chemist can be viewed. There is also a nice timeline feature where the user can select an era and a timeline with artifacts from that time period appear. When the user clicks on the artifact, a larger picture pops up along with a description of the item and a link to the Smithsonian collection in which it is found.

This site provides an opportunity to explore baseball through different curriculum areas. It could be used to explore race relations, history, mathematics, and the influence sports has had on our society over the generations.

This is an easy to follow site for Social Studies of the Westward Expansion and Pioneers.

This page has wonderful resources for teachers but also a few things that children might like as well after they have learned about healthy eating and the food guide pyramid. For example, there are many resources available for teachers to print when teaching about the food guide pyramid. There is also a "blast off" game that children can play. In the game children must supply their astronaut with the right balance of foods in order to make it to the planet they are trying to reach.

This site has many features including podcasts, audio, and video as well as photo, print, and other primary source documents arranged by era. Users can search from the beginning our country to the present. One of the most unique features of the site was the collection Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars. This section has 5 different categories of letters from soldiers, one from each era. There is a digital copy of the letter as well as an audio recording of the letter. This would be great to use with second language learners or struggling readers since the text is read to the user. Next to the picture there is also a photograph or print from the same era as the letter. A description of the letter's author is also printed next to the letter. A transcript which is easier to read than the original is also available.

This site focuses on original letters and contains audio files from the battlelines starting at the Revolutionary War to the Iraq War. Through these correspondences, a student will be able to have a better understanding of what war is like for the soldiers and their families from daily happenings to major events. Grades 6 +. Photos, print documents, a teachers guide, and a section called "teachable documents" help makes this a great site to help learn about different eras in our nation's history.

LOVE this website.  Letters from most American wars from Revolutionary War to Iraq.   Each letter appears on the screen and includes a recording of the letter read aloud.  Very powerful to hear the types of details soldiers wrote.  Each page also includes information about the solder. 5 categories to choose from with many letters in each.  The categories are enlisting, comforts of home, love, combat, and the end of the war.

This is the history page for the local branch of the Weather Service. It has photos of the various locations throughout the area, both current and past. Then there are some links and information at the bottom of the page. This would be great for the fourth grade when they begin their tornado units in the Spring.

I had to send this straight to 5th grade teachers in our district.  What a fun and valuable way to teach the difference between primary and secondary sources.  This is a clear and concise teaching of a topic that is very difficult for some students to comprehend.

Digital History:Explorations is a resource with time period/theme specific "webquests" for both students and teachers. Primary source documents (photos, documents, letters, etc.) along with teacher resources and lesson plans make this an excellent multiple literacies must for teachers and school librarians.

Ellis Island is an extremely important part of American History because our nation is founded on immigrants.  This site allows users to search the Ellis Island records for people who entered the country and discover more information about our own families.  Genealogy is something that isn't discussed much with students, but it is imperative for students to know our history.  Because we are a nation if immigrants, we all have relations to other countries and making that connection can be very important.  I would love to see high schoolers use this site to help investigate family origins.  Even if there were no connections to Ellis Island, they could choose from the list of more famous people to arrive.  The original documents that are captured on this site are a definite piece of our history that is worth investigating and sharing with others.

This section of America's Story focuses on the Amazing Americans who have helped shape American History.  The people are categorized by their profession or what made them famous.  The biographical information for each person provides an great summary of why they were important, links to more stories, photos, and even a timeline of their life in relation to what was happening in America.  Students begin to learn about specific people in our nation's history in 3rd and 4th grade.  This site would lend itself to exploring more information about these people from the trusted source of the Library of Congress.

PBS Teachers is a portal that provides preK-12 educational resources that include thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations that correlate to state and national educational. The site allows its user an advanced search option to fine tune their search for specific lessons by grade level, subject, and resource request (i.e.) lesson plans, video, interactive, slideshow. For educators, the site also provides a unique opportunity to subscribe and join different educator discussion forums as well as theme based theme-based widgets containing links to high-quality activity packs, resources, and activities for multiple grade levels.

Scholastic.com is a gateway with an overabundance of activities for both teacher and student. Scholastic provides easy to navigate tabs for locating resources and tools, strategies and ideas, student activities, and books and authors by grade levels (Pre-K-12). The choices are filtered by grade, subject, and activities to effectively narrow down the user's search (i.e.), math, social studies, reading, sports, special education, language arts and animals. Once the user has selected the necessary discipline, they are able to use interactive and engaging web and whiteboard activities as well as a variety of lesson plans that are geared toward the 21st Century learner.

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's photo library is a primary source for ocean and nature photographs. It is arranged by topic collections. Some of my favorites include: National Severe Storms Laboratory Collection (severe weather), It's a Small World Collection (around the world in alphabetical order), and Coral Kingdom Collection (vertebrates/invertebrates,plants). Excellent examples are provided for use with student lessons (i.e. coral kingdom for living vs. nonliving organisms) as well as student research materials.

The ipl2 website not only allows its users to access both national and international newspapers and magazines online, but it also provides its users quick and simple ways to search for materials with the click of a mouse (i.e.) for kids or teens, resources by subject, or special collections created by ipl2. The site permits researchers to search specific categories such as: art and humanities, education, law, government and political science, as well special collections for presidents and literary criticisms. The site offers a unique 24 hour a day help desk, where students and volunteer library and information science professionals provide answers to your questions via email.