AJUSD Social Studies

A look at advertising can introduce students to persuasive writing, the effect of different music, colors and mediums, critical thinking and problem solving.

I like to have students to consider both sides of advertising.  First, what does it mean to be a consumer and how does advertising play into that?  Second, how would you create an advertisement that reaches a target audience?

You can also tie advertising to history by asking students to look at World War II posters

C-SPAN's StudentCam is an annual national video documentary competition that encourages students to think seriously about issues that affect our communities and our nation. Students are asked to create a short (5-8 minute) video documentary on a topic related to the competition theme listed below.

The Constitution and You: Select any provision of the U.S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why it’s important to you.” Your documentary may focus on any section of the Preamble, Articles, or Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. You should not focus your documentary on failed or proposed amendments that have yet to pass. Choose a provision, grab a camera, and get started on your documentary today!

grades 6-12.

Go Social Studies Go is essentially a series of multimedia books about common social studies topics. The site is divided into four main sections; World Geography, World Religions, Ancient History, and Colonial America. Within each section is a series of booklets containing text, pictures, videos, and links to additional resources.

This year's poster is about the US Civil War. The poster is titled How Do You Piece Together the History of the Civil War? This 24"x36" poster demonstrates some uses of primary documents and artifacts for reconstructing the history of the Civil War.

Teachers of very young students probably want to review some of the video clips to determine if they would be too disturbing to watch.

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Help Teach About 9/11 (not in any order of preference):