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Educational information, activities and resources for educators, families, and students. Educational materials emphasize inquiry based learning with primary sources and museum collections. Smithsonian visit planning for educators, students and families. This site is an incredible resource for a teacher involved in any discipline.

In this age of increasing cutbacks in school funding, it is rare for students to be able to take field trips to museums. Thus, it is more important than ever to take advantage of virtual field trips where students can be exposed to primary sources and museum collections without leaving the classroom.

This is a lesson plan focused upon the Lakota Sioux and their keeping record of time and events with the use of Winter Counts. This detailed set of activities is appropriate for all grade levels: elementary, middle, and high. This lesson fulfills MN Standard I A 1 and MN Standard I C 1

PBS Teachers provides PreK-12 educational resources and activities for educators tied to PBS programming and correlated to local and national standards and professional development opportunities delivered online. As stated in the lesson plan overview: "Through the activities presented in this lesson, students will become familiar with the tenets of the Homestead Act, the shifting borders of the American frontier, and the life faced by homesteaders. After a class discussion and examination of a variety of Web sites, students will complete an written assessment in which they will determine whether or not the land available through the Homestead Act was, in fact, "free." This lesson can be used as an introduction to a unit on American settlement in the latter half of the nineteenth century, or as a pre-viewing activity to the PBS series FRONTIER HOUSE. A basic knowledge of 19th-century United States history is required."

This looks like a really interesting example of a teacher who is using social studies content in language arts to work on social justice issues.